Lahore to get 40MW waste-to-energy plant in 22 months

LAHORE: Granted formal permission in July this year by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) to generate electricity from solid waste and garbage, a Chinese firm and the Punjab government Friday inked a pact to establish a 40 Mega Watt (MW) waste to energy incineration plant on 52 hectares of land around Lahore.

The Municipal solid waste contains plants or animal products, materials such as paper, cardboard, food waste, grass clippings, leaves, wood, glass, metals, leather products, plastics and other synthetic materials made from petroleum.

Senior Punjab Minister, Abdul Aleem Khan, hoped the project would start producing energy within 22 months of its inception, though he did not comment on the challenges pertaining to toxic pollutants, which such plants emit and consequently pose threats to public health and environment protection.

On July 16, 2018, NEPRA had announced that the project would reduce 2000 tons of Lahore city’s municipal solid waste per day to generate electricity.

Earlier in May 2018, a Chinese government company had agreed to install a plant to produce 12 MW of energy from municipal waste in district Mardan.

A Memorandum of Understanding in this context was hence signed between China and the-then Khyber Pakhtoonkwa government.

Quite recently, on November 6, 2018, the Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, had directed the Solid Waste Management Authority in the province to prepare a policy to generate energy from the thousands of tonnes of solid waste produced in Karachi.

Murad Ali Shah had issued the directives saying that since Karachi generated nearly 17,000 tonnes of garbage daily, over 250 MW energy could easily be generated. The Sindh Chief Minister said he had consulted experts who opined that 50 MW of energy could be generated by feeding 3,000 tonnes of garbage every day to such a waste-to-energy project.