On October 21, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev attended a presentation on new projects for recycling household waste into electricity.
As reported by the president’s press service, Uzbekistan produces 14 million tons of solid waste annually, but only 4-5 percent is recycled. As a consequence, over 7 million tons of greenhouse gases and 43,000 tons of toxic substances formed at waste landfills are annually emitted into the atmosphere and penetrate the soil.
To resolve the problem, the Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection, and Climate Change has prepared several projects with foreign investors. The plan is to build waste incineration plants across Uzbekistan and process landfill gases at the Akhangaran landfill, with a total investment of about $1.3 billion.
A Chinese company, CAMC Engineering, will invest $350 million in constructing two waste incineration plants in the Andijan and Tashkent regions, capable of processing 4,000 tons of waste daily and generating 630 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. Another Chinese company, Shanghai SUS Environment, plans to invest $310 million in building two plants in the Samarkand and Kashkadarya regions to process 3,000 tons of waste daily and generate 480 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.
The United Arab Emirates Group is to invest $200 million in a plant in the Bukhara and Navoi regions to process 1,500 tons of waste daily and generate 363 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and Sejin (Republic of Korea) will invest $55 million in the construction of a 16-megawatt electricity plant in the Akhangaran district of Tashkent to generate electricity from landfill gases.
The combined projects, to be implemented between 2025-’27, are predicted to burn over 4.7 million tons of solid municipal waste annually and generate 2.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity worth $97 million, saving 152 million cubic meters of natural gas and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2.4 million tons.
Back on September 26, the President of Uzbekistan established the Agency for Waste Management and Circular Economy Development aimed to introduce modern methods of collecting, sorting, and recycling waste and producing alternative energy, raw materials, and organic fertilizers. Eco-industrial zones are also to be created on landfill sites across Uzbekistan.
