VietNamNet Bridge - Investors are hesitating to pour money into waste treatment projects because of unclear service fees set by local authorities.

 

In 2012, Trisun International Developments and Kien Giang Company Ltd planned to build a waste treatment plant to treat waste with plasma technology, a green and clean technology which can generate electricity.

Under the project designed by the two companies, 80 percent of waste will be transformed into electricity, while the remainder will create secondary products such as syngas, black rock and soft rock.

Tu Ngoc An, chair of Kien Giang Composite Company, representing Trisun in Vietnam, said at a press conference in that year that in the first phase of the project, the production line with the capacity of 2,000 tons of waste a day would be put into operation in the first phase of the project. 

It was expected that 1.6 million kwh of electricity would be created a day, 45 percent of which would be used to run the plant, while the remaining 55 percent would be provided to the national grid.

However, most recently, Tu Ngoc Duc Paul, director of KGC, told the local press that the project still cannot be implemented at this moment because of the problems related to the waste treatment service fee.

An analyst said that the investor had its reasons to delay the implementation of the project.

“The investor cannot estimate the profit if it still cannot reach agreement with the local authorities about the service fee,” he said.

Incinerating garbage for electricity is the safe solution for the environment and should be encouraged by the government. However, scientists warned that it would be not easy to build and operate such plants.

In June 2015, Deputy PM Hoang Trung Hai requested that HCM City authorities  consider a project using plasma technology to produce electricity from garbage.

The city authorities had assigned the city’s science department to work out on a project on building an incinerator with the capacity of 1,000 tons per day.

Nguyen Van Tuan, general director of the Vietnam Environment JSC, said it was not difficult to master the technology to burn garbage for electricity. The problem was in the low waste-incineration fees set by the local authorities.

Tuan went on to say that since the waste in Vietnam is very moist, electricity productivity will not be as high as in other countries.

Therefore, investors need two conditions: 1) incineration fee of $30 per ton at least and 2) 500 tons of waste a day.

DNSG