QC sees power in garbage

WITH the looming power supply crisis in the country, Quezon City is considering turning the garbage dumped in the Payatas landfill as an energy source.

Mayor Herbert M. Bautista has announced plans to acquire a waste-to-energy (WTE) facility to scale up the city’s efforts in generating electricity. WTE is the process of converting waste materials into electricity or heat through combustion. It reduces methane generation from landfill.

In a statement on Friday, Bautista said the facility would produce 36 megawatts of electricity daily from the 2,000 tons of trash thrown into the landfill every day.

The city, however, would need between P8 billion and 10 billion in addition to 10 hectares of land for the construction of the facility.

The city currently operates the Payatas Controlled Waste Disposal Facility which generates about 40,000 kph of electricity every month. It supplies electricity to the Meralco power grid and free power to surrounding communities.

The facility under the Biogas Emission Reduction Project was registered and approved as a Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2008.

Bautista made the announcement after the Alyansa ng mga Samahang Nagkakaisa sa Payatas, a group of residents living beside the sanitary landfill, asked the Supreme Court in March to stop the facility’s operations and expansion, saying it poses risks to their health and the environment.

The high tribunal, however, dismissed their petition, saying they were exposing themselves to these dangers by insisting on living in the area.