Africa-Press – Eswatini.
Matsapha Municipality Council has finalised its feasibility study for Waste To Energy which has proven that it is possible to generate power from waste.
This was said by Matsapha Town Board Environmental Health and Community Services Manager Mancoba Zwane when making his presentation at the 60+ Earth Hour Launch on Wednesday.
consultations
Zwane said this came after a series of consultations and window shopping for information from other municipalities within Africa and beyond the continent.
He said after realising the amount of waste the industrial town produced, they came up with the idea to convert the waste to energy something which other cities were doing as part of waste management.
“We were excited when we received the report which indicated that it is possible to implement this project which will generate power for our industries.
This is such a relief since developing a waste to energy plant just at the existing municipal sanitary landfill is another direct response to climate change,” he said.
Zwane said now that they had the report, they would be engaging with the Eswatini Energy Regulatory Authority (ESERA) which was a statutory energy regulatory body established to regulate the energy sector.
He said the authority would then guide them on how best they could implement this project.
He said for now, they could not commit on timelines as the authority also needed to take time to do their own assessments.
Zwane however, stated that once all the processes were done, they would be able to turn all the waste into energy, thus reducing harm to the environment as Matsapha produced all kinds of waste due to the nature of the businesses found at their industrial site.
Zwane also noted that they supported the big industries located in their town which were high energy demanding companies who had ventured into renewable energy mini-plants for self-use.
solar
“There is a company that developed a solar plant what will offset a high percentage of the utility bill. Solar energy is one option for reducing future greenhouse gas emissions.
Offsetting 50 per cent of all future growth in thermal electricity generation by photovoltaics (PVs) would reduce annual global carbon dioxide emission from projected increased levels by 10 per cent in 20 years and 32 per cent in 50 years,” he said.
He said for this year’s earth hour day, Matsapha had partnered with YKK and Leites Toyota to plant 60+ trees in Matsapha Airport Park. He added that in 2020, they had hosted an event of where the Prime Minister launched a five-year long project where the country had to plant 10 million trees across rural and urban areas.
On this day, 200 indigenous trees were planted by the cabinet ministers to encourage citizens to do the same.
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