Kenya: City Hall Turns to Dump Sites in Campaign to Generate Power

[greencat]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Business Daily (Nairobi)

Kenya: City Hall Turns to Dump Sites in Campaign to Generate Power
Steve Mbogo
16 October 2009

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Nairobi City Council is turning to garbage dumps for a solution to Kenya's energy crisis in a move that promises to open a new revenue stream for City Hall and help ease its cash flow problems.

People familiar with the plan say City Hall is banking on America's General Electric (GE) to provide the technology and skills to capture methane from garbage and sewage for use in powering generators that will produce electricity.

George Njenga, the head of GE Energy in East Africa said discussions with City Hall were at an advanced stage and has attracted "high level interest" among top management.

GE Energy trades in Jenbacher machines that process garbage and capture methane -- a gas that is produced by biodegradable refuse material and used to power electricity generators.

Town Clerk Philip Kisia promised to give details next week but did not deny the existence of the plan.

If successful, the project will make Nairobi Africa's second city -- after South Africa's Durban -- to generate electricity from garbage.

Durban generates 6MW of electricity from sewage and the same amount from garbage.

The technology is widely used in Europe, especially in Italy, where most of the garbage is used to generate electricity.

Besides opening a fresh revenue stream for City Hall and reducing the city's massive load of garbage, this project could also help Kenya realize its desire to reduce its heavy dependence on hydro-power without using fossil fuels that destroy the environment to generate electricity.

The ongoing discussions between NCC and the GE Energy are expected to enter the second phase later this month and will see the American technology giant set up a pilot operation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. GE did not confirm whether the demo unit has arrived in the city.

This phase of the discussions will also revolve crafting a project management agreement that GE wants to be assigned to a semi-autonomous entity that is constituted in a similar method as the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company. It will run on a public private partnership model that Durban has successfully used to drive its project.

Mr Njenga said the project also offers the potential to create hundreds of jobs as it will depend on private companies to collect and transport the garbage to the power generations sites.

It is estimated Nairobi's daily garbage and sewage output can produce at least 10MW of electricity.

That could see City Hall add at least Sh150 million to its revenue pool going by the current rates that Energy Regulatory Commission has offered similar producers of power such as Mumias Sugar.

Durban produces over 1.8 million tonnes of waste a year, a large fraction of which is disposed of in landfill sites.

Nairobi is estimated to produce 2,400 tonnes of garbage per day translating to 876 tonnes annually.

City Hall says only a quarter of the total garbage output is collected and a paltry 30 per cent of the estimated five million population is served by a functioning sewage system.

The 32-acre Dandora dump site serves as the city's main refuse disposal site and is increasingly being seen as a threat to the environment and residents of the surrounding estates.

Past studies involving analysis of soil samples from locations adjacent to the dump site have revealed high levels of heavy metals pollution from lead, mercury, cadmium, copper and chromium.

"A medical analysis of the children and adolescents living and schooling in the neighbourhood showed the population is at high risk of metal pollutants infection," said Comboni Missionaries who work with communities around the dumpsite.

The NCC/GE Energy project will be located at Ruai, where the current dumpsite is to be relocated.

The Ruai dump site is being developed by the government with support from the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and will have modern waste recycling facilities, which lack at the Dandora site.

The business community welcomed the new development saying it will help manage the garbage crisis and create jobs for youth.

Timothy Muriuki, the chairman of the Nairobi Central Business District Association (NCBDA) said a lot of resources are used to transport garbage to the dump site without reciprocating benefits.

"Success of the project means that it is the transporters who will buy garbage from the households and not households paying the transporters to dispose of the refuse," he said. "The transporters will then sell the garbage to the company running the electricity project."

Mr Muriuki, however, reckons that success of the project depends on changing the way NCC engages the private sector.

"There is a lot of uncertainty and the case of Adopt A Light has made a lot of business people to shy away from partnerships with the council," he said.

NCC's total revenue is Sh9.6 against expenditure of similar amount.

Receipts from the government account for 28.2 per cent of the councils revenue, said the council's finance chairman Councillor Alex Otieno.


Another source of revenue for the council will be the money paid to such projects which help tap gasses that are harmful to the ozone layer and which are contributing to the global warning and climate change.

Methane, is the principal by-product of garbage decomposition is a lethal gas to the ozone layer.

Experts say it is 21 times more lethal to ozone layer than carbon dioxide.

Companies like Mumias Sugar Company and KenGen are some of those lined up to earn from climate change investment projects in a near future.

The by-product of tapping methane from carbon will be high-quality, agricultural fertilizer that neutralizes acid levels with a higher Ph-value and is nearly odourless.

Research shows using this kind of fertilizer instead of the original manure has a positive effect on the local water bodies.

NCC could also earn from sale of this fertilizer.