Pakistan’s first ever waste-to-energy plant gets green signal

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has approved the grant of power generation licence to Lahore Xingzhong Renewable Energy Company Limited, which will be Pakistan’s first such plant with a capacity of turning waste to 40 MW of electricity.

The plant will be setup at Lakhodair, Lahore and will deploy a state-of-the-art incineration-type generation facility and the most suitable waste-to-energy technology. “The project will reduce 2,000 tons/day of the city’s municipal solid waste to generate electricity and is seems as silver bullet to address the municipality’s waste and energy needs of the country,” NEPRA stated in a statement.

In this regard, the power regulator has already announced a Competitive Upfront Tariff of US Cents 10.007/kWh for waste to energy projects based on 25 years operational period, with overall capacity cap of 250 MW.

Meanwhile, the share of each province and Federal Territory have been kept at 50 MW each. “Successful implementation of the project will pave the way for other such initiatives to solve pressing waste disposal problems and challenges of limited space for landfills and gas emissions resulting cleaner cities and healthy life,” NEPRA added.