Masdar will help Sharjah generate power from trash, enabling the emirate to meet its target of zero landfill waste by 2020.
The Abu Dhabi clean energy company will build a waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in Sharjah with the emirate’s waste management firm, Bee’ah, after first announcing their partnership last year.
The facility, expected to be completed by 2020, will convert about 37.5 tonnes of solid waste an hour into 30 megawatts of electricity.
The value of the project was not released.
"The agreement will lead to more projects and bold initiatives that will help the partnership to ensure a sustainable and green future for the UAE," Khaled Al Huraimel, the Bee'ah chief executive, said on Wednesday at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.
Sharjah attempted to meet its goal to divert all waste from its landfills by 2015, although that timeline has now been readjusted to 2020.
Bee’ah picks up about 2.3 million tonnes of waste a year from about 1 million homes, diverting about 70 per cent of the waste to its recycling facilities.
The global WTE market is forecast to grow to more than US$33 billion by 2023 from $20.86bn in 2015, according to Global Market Insights, a US research and consultancy company.
Last year, Dubai Municipality announced it would build a Dh2bn WTE plant in Warsan district as the emirate aims to reduce landfill waste by 75 per cent by 2020.
“With GCC countries having among the highest rates of per capita waste production in the world, sustainable waste management solutions are both critically important and a clear business opportunity,” said Mohamed Al Ramahi, the chief executive of Masdar.
lgraves@thenational.ae
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