South Korea builds world’s largest garbage-fuelled power plant
South Korea has opened the world’s largest
garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by
500,000 barrels a year as a result.
South Korea has opened the world’s largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result.
The 50-megawatt plant, designed to provide power to more than 180,000 households, began operating on Tuesday. It sits on a mammoth garbage dump in the city of Incheon west of Seoul, the ministry said in a statement.
For fuel, it uses only the methane gas naturally generated from the decomposing garbage on the site.
“It reduces greenhouse gas emissions by burning away methane and avoids burning more fossil fuel for electricity,” Park Han-Eop, an official of the ministry’s waste treatment division, told AFP.
The plant will save the country the import of 500,000 barrels of heavy oil and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.37 million tonnes per year, he said.
South Korea currently relies heavily on nuclear power plants which supply 40 percent of demand. It imports all its oil needs.
You might think that a nation which leads the world in the production of garbage — might also make this a priority? Right.
Posted: Fri - December 15, 2006 at 08:35 AM