A waste-to-energy plant in Soc Son district, Hanoi. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam needed to develop policies to encourageinvestments in waste-to-energy, also called bioenergy, which wouldsignificantly contribute to protecting the environment, experts have said.
Tran Viet Ngai, President of the Vietnam Energy Association, said the hugevolume of waste produced each day was a burden. If the trash that wouldotherwise go to a landfill was burned to churn out electricity, it would bringa number of benefits.
Generating energy from waste was another source of clean energy at a reasonablecost and would contribute to protecting the environment, Ngai said.
A huge volume of waste is dumped every day in Vietnam but energy-from-waste hadnot caught on across the country.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s latest report showed that about 70,000tonnes of daily waste is dumped into the environment every day, 10 percent ofwhich came from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. About 85 percent of waste in Vietnamis simply dumped into landfill sites, which created the risks of causingpollution while it was also a waste not to burn it to create energy.
According to the Vietnam Energy Association, waste-to-energy technology iswidely used in many countries.
Recently, Vietnam has seen the development of several waste-to-energy projectssuch as the Soc Son, Phu Tho, VIETSTAR, Thanh Hoa, Thai Binh and Hai Phong bioenergyplants.
Hoang Manh Ha from Power Engineering Consulting Joint Stock Company 1 (PECC1)said there were around 1,000 waste-to-power plants in the world, with 38 percentin Europe, 24 percent in Japan, 19 percent in the US and 15 percent in eastAsia.
Ha said that many investors were showing a growing interest in developingbioenergy in Vietnam, especially in major cities where huge volumes of wastewere dumped daily.
Chen Wei, general director of EB Environment Energy Company Limited whichoperates the Can Tho waste-to-energy plant, said that one year in operation, theplant treated about 1,750,000 tonnes of waste to create 53.2 million kWh intotal. Every day, it treated 400 tonnes of waste on average, or 70 percent ofthe city’s trash.
Under the renewable energy development strategy by 2030 with a vision to 2050, Vietnamtargets to increase the percentage of urban solid waste used for energy to 30 percentin 2020 and nearly 70 percent in 2030. By 2050, all urban solid waste would beused to generate electricity.
Experts said waste-to-energy plants required huge investment capital, whichtogether with low electricity generation capacity to the national power gridmade the payback period amount to up to 20 years.
According to Pham Nguyen Hung, PECC1’s general director, there was a lack ofdetailed instructions about adding waste-to-energy projects to the country’spower development planning, which made it difficult to invest in bioenergy.
Vietnam needed to issue detailed policies to encourage investments inbioenergy, including policies about power buying prices and details about wastetreatment standards to attract investors./.
VNA
