UAE building Gulf’s first waste-to-power plant for electricity

UAE building Gulf’s first waste-to-power plant for electricity

With rubbish piling up, the United Arab Emirates has found a new way to get rid of its trash – incinerators that will turn it into electricity.

The UAE, one of the world’s top oil exporters, is building the Gulf region’s first waste-to-power plants to ease its chronic trash problem and, at the same time, its reliance on gas-fueled electricity stations.

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Engineer Nouf Wazir, from waste management company Bee’ah, said the power plant is a way to make use of refuse that cannot be recycled.

“Not everyone knows that waste has value,” said Wazir, a senior engineer on the project.

The Sharjah facility is expected to launch this year, burning more than 300,000 tons of waste per year to power up to 28,000 homes. In the neighboring emirate of Dubai, another plant is being developed at a cost of $1.2 billion, according to Hitachi Zosen Inova, one of the partner companies.

When it is completed in 2024, the Dubai plant will be one of the largest in the world, capable of gobbling up 1.9 million tons of waste per year -- about 45 percent of the household waste currently produced in