Ground breaking ceremony held for waste-to-energy facility in Naga City

Source: Philippine Information Agency

NAGA CITY -- A P3-billion facility will soon rise at Barangay San Isidro to address the problem on solid waste disposal that has beset this city for the past decade.

A ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the said waste-to-energy facility has been held on Nov 22. Among those who attended were Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla and Department of Natural Resources and Environment Secretary Ramon Paje, representatives of the CJ Global Green Energy of South Korea, Hitachi Zosen and several other Japanese firms and the local government of Naga City.

The nod to proceed with the construction of the plant was finally given by the DOE after two (2) years of negotiations with the city government and the investors.

The project will be under the build-operate-transfer scheme. The facility will be erected in the 5-hectare expanse of Barangay San Isidro, this city.

The project, which will also generate 20 megawatts of electricity will also be instrumental in ensuring that environmental concerns will be properly addressed. For one, the facility will produce low-cost and environment-friendly electricity for the residents of Naga and its neighboring municipalities.

The plant, once completed, is projected to produce 8 to 10 megawatts of electricity from 100 tons of garbage that will be collected daily.

To complement and sustain this environmental endeavor, Ms. Farah Bongat, the city’s First Lady conducted a tree-planting activity through the Pilimania, a project under the city government’s Greening, Environmental Protection, Entrepreneurship, Tourism or GREET program which aims to mitigate carbon emission as pili trees exhibit a high carbon absorption rate, improve air shed quality and enhance the city’s One Town, One Product program, among others.

Bongat also assured the residents particularly the Material Recovery Facility or MRF workers in Barangay Balatas that they will be properly taken cared of. Bongat was referring to the income earners who derive their living out of the garbage within the MRF area.

“Before taking care of the environment, it is one of the city’s paramount concerns that we take the priority of ensuring that our people are protected, socially and economically. They have already set up capability building initiatives to capacitate them to shift to some other economic activities to have sustainable income,” Bongat said.

A process called gasification will be employed in the use of the facility.

Gasification is the conversion of solid carbon fuels and other solid wastes into their basic elements by thermochemical process. The garbage will all be loaded in a close chamber with a temperature of 2,000 degrees centigrade or higher enough to reduce its content back to their natural state.

The facility is expected to produce not just electricity but also hot water, steam and hydrogen and methanol which can be used as LPG for households and transport vehicles.

The project was initiated by the late SILG Jesse M. Robredo in 2010. (MAL/LSM-PIA5/Camarines Sur)