In search of energy sources that would provide the country with a stable supply of energy, particularly during the peak dry season when yellow and red alerts are prevalent, a sustainable source may just lie around the corner.
Thus, turning waste into energy has become in vogue because it will hit two birds with one stone as it contributes to the production of power while also helping clean up the environment.
Industry experts, however, consider the current laws do not support the development of a waste-to-energy industry.
The Clean Air Act, for instance, sets rigid standards for incineration, the primary waste-to-energy technology.
The House of Representatives already passed a bill allowing the use of waste-to-energy and redefining the incineration ban in the Clean Air Act. The next step, however, is stuck in the Senate which, as with other bills transmitted from the House, has not even started public hearings.
Opportunities in the
use of waste
By 2025, the Philippines would have generated up to 92 million tons of waste, the equivalent of 500,000 blue whales, the largest animals to ever live on Earth.
Then the country need not worry about a garbage crisis since it becomes the feedstock to generate power.
The amount of waste that could end up in landfills, street corners, empty lots, or bodies of water will grow in direct proportion to population and urban centers.
Landfills have limited capacities. A large volume of plastics that now clog the world’s oceans come from the Philippines, which is ranked one of the biggest contributors to plastic pollution in the seas.
A law that could stop the waste-to-energy thrust dead on its track is the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act or ESWMA which mandated the use of landfills for waste disposal.
ESWMA clashes head-on with the Renewable Energy Act, which mandated the government to prescribe policies and programs promoting and enhancing the development of biomass waste-to-energy facilities.
The push for waste-to-energy as alternative fossil fuels lacks clarity in policies.
First, the government through the DoE would have to list waste-to-energy as a priority power source as it did other renewable energy technologies—solar, wind, etc.
To bring waste-to-energy production into the energy mix, there should be guaranteed and long-term power purchase agreements which would allow private companies to at least recoup their investments.
The technology, nonetheless, is not cheap. Facilities that would turn heat from burning waste into energy would require substantial capital and technical expertise. Public-private partnerships would be ideal for such projects.
Waste-to-energy facilities would require higher fees that would be charged against waste generators, including local governments. But who would end up bearing the added costs? Not the local governments with their commonly inadequate revenues.
Consumers will have to bear the additional costs of waste-to-energy facilities if the government fails to provide support in the form of funding and incentives which are done in successful waste-to-energy systems like Singapore and Japan.
Filtering facilities are part of state-of-the-art technologies to prevent waste-to-energy facilities from contributing to the toxic mix in the air.
Environmental advocates have been campaigning against burning trash which they said is dirtier than burning coal.
Incinerators release unimaginable volumes of minute pollutants into the air that could eventually affect the health of nearby residents.
Waste-to-energy facilities need waste, they would need more and more trash to ramp up the production of energy, encouraging a steady and growing stream of waste.
In some areas where local governments are starting to embrace waste-to-energy technology, unrest becomes prevalent among local folks.
In the search for sustainable and clean sources of energy, the government should have an active part since proper use of technology will help mitigate the periodic lack of power while ending the trash problem that has defied solutions for ages.