Environmental groups have raised the warning against the use of waste-to-energy technology to
generate electricity, arguing this offers “false solutions”
to waste management, more expensive and odds-on
to produce more toxic pollutants
The warning is a bulletin board for the Philippines, which codified Republic Act 9513, or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, which allows the use of
waste-to-energy (WTE) technology, but only in a limited sense, and affirms the government’s commitment
to accelerate the use of renewable energy resources
in the country.
The law mandates the Department of Energy
to encourage the adoption of WTE facilities and considers biodegradable organic fractions of industrial and
municipal wastes as part of biomass resources.
WTE, a term which describes various technologies that convert non-recyclable waste into usable
forms of energy including heat, fuels and electricity, is
sometimes called a trash-to-energy, municipal waste
incineration, energy recovery, or resource recovery
plant.
The warning echoes after the Environmental Management Bureau projected that from 2022 to
2025, the country’s generated waste will hit 92 million
tonnes.
“The protection of our environment is an important consideration, so safeguards are provided in
the proposed measure to make sure that this innovation will not be at the cost of health or environment
safety,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said last
year.
“Unfortunately, our solid waste disposal system is yet to keep up with the continuously increasing
amount of household and domestic wastes that we
produce,” Zubiri said, adding WTE shall be classified
as another renewable energy resource.
“This way, not only would we be able to prevent our landfills from being filled up, but we can harness usable energy from non-recyclable waste,” he
said.
Experts say WTE plants cause less air pollution than coal plants, but more than natural gas plants.
It is also carbon-negative: processing waste into fuel
releases considerably less carbon and methane into
the air than having waste decay away in landfills or
bodies of water.
We hear experts argue the disadvantages
have grown even more during the past couple of years,
like the particulates and pollution it produces, the destruction of valuable materials, and the potential to disincentivize renewable energy sources and sustainable
waste management solu
