German firm, LWMC sign MoU to produce energy from waste

LAHORE: Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) has signed an MoU with a German firm to produce energy from waste.

The work on the proposed 100MW waste-to-energy project is picking up momentum as German and Thai firms are interested in launching their projects under the public-private partnership.

In a press release issued Wednesday by the LWMC, its CEO has stated that LWMC will provide at least 2,000 tons of solid waste to the German company for power generation on a daily basis. The project would not only consume 24 million tons of waste dumped at Lakhodair and Mehmood Booti dump site but also the 5,000 to 7,000 tons of fresh waste that is being collected daily in addition to that.

The Punjab Energy Department will oversee the project while the LWMC will provide waste for power generation. According to the project brief under the Alternative & Renewable Energy (ARE) Policy, 2019, the custodian for any waste-to-energy project in Punjab is the Punjab Power Development Board (PPDB); the Federal ARE Policy allows the processing of new technologies.

In this regard, the LWMC issued a letter of facilitation to the PPDB on August 28, 2020, for assurance of 3,000 tonnes/day of municipal solid waste (MSW) for any waste-to-energy project. The company has allocated 25 acres at the Lakhodair landfill for the waste to energy plant.

To facilitate future potential investors, the company is also conducting a chemical characterisation study of MSW to determine the calorific value of waste. which will be available in December 2022.

An in-house physical waste characterisation study is also conducted at different times every year by the company. Moreover, the first-ever waste-to-energy seminar in Pakistan was also conducted by the company in April 2021, which attracted several local and international investors.

The CEO said waste-to-energy is now considered an eco-friendly and reliable form of energy that has become the basis for many of the most successful solid waste management (SWM) systems in the world.

To better manage our MSW, according to CEO, the LWMC and the Punjab government are exploring all traditional and non-traditional options to produce energy, and energy waste is one of them. Under the MoU titled "Waste Recycling and Setting Up the Waste to Energy Power Generation Plant," signed by Innovative Techno Plus GmbH, a German company, and the LWMC through its LG&CD department, the core objective of the MoU is to formally create a working relationship between the ITP and the LWMC.