Declared Pamintuan: “The city is wasting so much money on garbage disposal alone. Angeles City, alone, spends more than P 100 million per year for its proper disposal of waste. With the construction of the plant, we could allocate our funds in improving the health and social services offered by the city government.”
Overemphasis overimpacting us there, Sir.
Reportedly to cost some $47 million, “W2W is a project founded by the triad of Procter & Gamble, the Asian Development Bank, and the National Solid Waste Management Commission.” It will be “specially tailored for Angeles City and will be built in Barangay Capaya.”
With the W2W facility, “the city government expects to mitigate at least 230 tons of municipal solid waste per day, with output streams consisting of high value recyclables, and electricity output up to 10 megawatts (MW).”
We can deduce there that W2W is some kind of a garbage-to-electricity thingy. Ay, there’s the rub. Given the sordid experience LGUs here had had with these proffered solutions to the problem of solid wastes which all invariably turned toogood- to-be-true.
No, I don’t mean to rain on Pamintuan’s parade over his advocacy du jour. The triad of P&G, ADB and NSWMC backing W2W solidly grounded. And we have always been one with him in cleaning and greening the city.
Some unguarded pessimism though obtains in us, having been burned at least thrice by quacks and charlatans in the alternative unreality of the waste-to-energy business. So we dig up our baul of writings that is acaesar.blogspot.com and under “waste to energy” find these:
Unreal MacKay
In Sept. 2011, Gov. Lilia G. Pineda and Lubao Mayor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab signed a memorandum of agreement with one James Mackay, chairman of the Pampanga Green Management Inc. and the MacKay Green Energy Inc., for the establishment of a $63-million facility that will convert the province’s garbage into electricity.
The proponent hailed the facility as state of the-art – “treating metropolitan solid waste and using the refuse derived fiber to produce renewable energy: 800 metric tons of garbage a day will go through combustion to generate 22 megawatts of electricity, enough to energize 110,000 households at the rate of one megawatt for every 5,000 households.”
Promising: “With combustion at 1,200 to 1,800 degrees centigrade, the facility produces no toxic gases…there will be no longer any need for landfills. With our facility, you can be guaranteed to be safe from any leachate, which is very hazardous. Methane issues will no longer be a problem.”
Soon followed the groundbreaking at Barangay Sta. Catalina. And that was it. Nothing ensued further.
Biosphere scam
Much earlier, in 2006 the City of San Fernando boasted of the final solution to its garbage woes with the Biosphere facility right at the fringes of the city’s open dumpsite in Barangay Lara.
Ballyhooed as a waste to-gasification facility, the Spectrum Blue Steel pelletizing plant publicized as ran by one True Green Energy Corp. failed to make even but a tenth of its promised solution in the seven years that the city government allowed itself to be fooled by it.
It was only in 2013, when stacks of residual wastes to be processed threatened to bury the Biosphere plant itself that city hall regained its senses and cancelled its contract with the company.
Rued city administrator Fer Limbitco then: “They put up the building and some equipment but it was not enough. They even erected electricity transmission posts at the facility supposedly to deliver the energy to nearby barangays. They showed a sample pellet produced from the equipment but that was it. And then there was nothing more in the following years except they kept saying other equipment to complete the facility were already in transit and being shipped. Gewa da ka ming mulala (They made fools out of us).”
Passing gas
Just about the time San Fernando’s Biosphere folly was found and corrected, yet another waste-to-energy proposal was laid down the door of the provincial government.
In September 2013 , Captiol press released “$450-M plasma plant to solve trash problem” reporting on US-based Quantum International Group, Inc. seeking a joint venture with the provincial government “to establish a plasma waste treatment facility for the processing and disposal of municipal and industrial solid wastes.”
The $450 million was intended “to be used for the construction of the plant, purchase, importation and set-up of all plasma equipment, and as compensation for the technology required in the plasma processing.”
Per the PR: “The proposed plasma gasifi cation plant needs at least 2,000 metric tons of municipal and industrial wastes daily and is expected to produce power supply not only for the province but for some other parts of Central Luzon.”
And more: “The processing of 2,000 metric tons of wastes could generate 2,000 megawatts of power. The local government units might be able to choose what products they wanted to produce from the plasma gasification plant such gasoline, kerosene and bio-fuels.”
Unlike MacKay’s, the plasma plant failed even just to groundbreak. Just like MacKay’s, nothing more was heard of it since.
Green peace
Gasification. Waste-to-energy. Plasma. Same difference. Differently the same. All involving some incineration or the other.
As well articulated by Greenpeace activist Von Hernandez at the time of the MOA signing of the Capitol and MacKay: “The Clean Air Act of 1999 explicitly prohibits the incineration of municipal waste, and the proponent (MacKay) is using clever semantic subterfuge (i.e. characterizing their technology as gasification, pyrolisis, or plasma airs) to try to exempt their proposed facility from the ban.
“They will claim that their technology is state of the art and without emissions. I find such spectacular claims hard to believe. While there may be state of the art incinerators, there is no such thing as a pollution-free incinerator.
“The combustion of waste especially chlorine containing materials like plastics creates cancer-causing dioxins and furans, liberates heavy metals into the air, essentially converting a waste problem into a formidable toxics pollution problem which will threaten the communities around the proposed facility.”
Concluded Hernandez: “The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources and the Pampanga provincial government should be cautious and not fall into this trap. Under the Clean Air Act, the public can take them to court for sabotaging and violating the provisions of the law.”
Hernandez is the 2003 Goldman Environmental awardee, 2007 Time Hero of the Environment, member of the Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, an international anti-incineration coalition promoting zero waste, and the executive director (on leave) of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
$450-M plasma plant to solve trash problem. MacKay Green Energy. Biosphere pelletizing plant. Pure garbage talk. All the pun intended there.
Disclaimer
No, I am not saying Pamintuan’s W2W is another ambitious waste-to-energy scam.
