Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, is to develop a waste-to-energy plant in Sharjah, in partnership with Bee’ah, the environmental management company, it has been announced.
Diverting as much as 300,000 tonnes of solid waste from landfill each year, the project will help Sharjah reach its “zero waste-to-landfill” target by 2020 and the UAE deliver on its 2021 goal of diverting 75 percent of solid waste from landfills, a statement said.
The facility will incinerate up to 37.5 tonnes of solid waste per hour to create 30 megawatts (MW) of energy. This will add more power to what is produced by Bee’ah’s auxiliary waste-to-energy project, which will eventually produce a total of 90MW and will be supplied to the Sharjah electricity grid.
Khaled Al Huraimel, Group CEO of Bee’ah, said: “Today marks the first venture in the realisation of the partnership that we announced with Masdar last year. The cutting-edge Waste-to-Energy plant in Sharjah is a concrete example of what this strategic partnership will deliver to the UAE and the communities that we serve.”
He added: “The agreement signed today will lead to more projects and bold initiatives that will help the partnership to ensure a sustainable and green future for the UAE.”
Established in 2007, Bee’ah collects approximately 2.3 million tonnes of waste from nearly one million households in Sharjah each year, diverting around 70 percent of its collected waste to its recycling waste management facilities from landfill.
Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, CEO of Masdar, said: “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.”