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this UAE, One of the world’s top
The exporter is building the first waste-to-energy plant in the Gulf to alleviate its long-term waste problem and at the same time ease its dependence on gas-fired power stations.
The green group is not convinced. They said that under the severely wasteful consumption rate, advanced recycling, composting and changing habits would be better for the environment, and warned of the pollution risks of greenhouse gas-intensive incinerators.
But engineer Nouf Wazir, from Waste The management company Bee’ah believes that this is a way to use garbage that cannot be recycled.
“Not everyone knows that waste is valuable,” said Wazir, a senior engineer on the project. The Sharjah facility is expected to be launched this year, burning more than 300,000 tons of garbage each year, strength Up to 28,000 families.
According to Hitachi Zosen Inova, one of the partner companies, another factory is under construction in the neighbouring Emirate of Dubai at a cost of US$1.2 billion.
Upon completion in 2024, the Dubai plant will become one of the largest in the world, capable of processing 1.9 million tons of waste each year-about 45% of the household waste currently generated in the emirate.
As the UAE has rapidly developed from a desert outpost to a prosperous commercial center, garbage has multiplied.
According to the International Energy Agency, electricity usage has soared by 750% since 1990.
With a population of about 10 million now, five times the population of 30 years ago, the affluent UAE uses more electricity and generates more waste per capita than almost any other country.
The authorities set the waste output at 1.8 kilograms (four pounds) per person per day.
In the UAE, “people consume a lot and they throw away a lot,” said Riad Bestani, founder of ECOsquare, a consulting company specializing in environmental waste management in Dubai.
Landfill sites are all over the country. According to the city government, in Dubai alone, there are six covering approximately 1.6 million square meters (395 acres).
In the absence of other solutions, it is estimated that by 2041, landfills will occupy an area of 5.8 million square meters in the Emirates, equivalent to the area of more than 800 football fields.
According to Emma Barber, director of DGrade in Dubai, the cost of landfills is “almost non-existent, so dumping all materials into the desert is cheap and easy.” The company uses recycled plastic bottles to design clothes and Accessories.
The UAE has begun to diversify its power generation, with more than 90% of it coming from gas-fired power plants.
Last year, the UAE opened its first nuclear power plant in the Arab world, and used its location in one of the hottest regions in the world to have abundant solar energy resources.
Before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which started on Sunday, the UAE stated that its goal was to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Although supporters of these factories say that the risk of pollution from incinerators is small, activists say that other methods are better for the environment.
According to Janek Vahk of Zero Waste Europe, incineration of waste may be “easier” than landfills that take up space, but it is far from green.
“The most beneficial to the climate (and) the environment is restoration” and composting, Vahk told AFP.
“But it didn’t really happen because… simply burning it is easier than separating, sorting, and recycling.”
The Brussels-based non-governmental organization called for a moratorium on new waste incinerators and phasing out old waste incinerators by 2040, and warned that the electricity they produce is greenhouse gas-intensive—even when compared to fossil fuels.
Vahk believes that when the heat generated is also used, incineration is “more efficient” in the colder Nordic countries, but not in the hot desert.
“If you only generate electricity, the greenhouse gas intensity of this energy is very high,” Vahk said, adding that incinerators “are also very expensive to build-and they require continuous investment to operate.”
Rami Shaar, co-founder of the Dubai-based startup Washmen, said that waste-to-energy is not “inevitable green energy”.
“This is a solution to not extract more oil… but it does not solve all the problems,” he said.
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