Sun Zhongpeng, left, operations and maintenance manager at CNEEC, Wu Peipei, center, CNEEC employee, and Getachew Betemariam, right, a visitor, take a photo in front of Reppie Waste-to-Energy Plant built on reclaimed land from an old landfill. [Photo by Edith Mutethya/China Daily]
Born and brought up in Koshe in the southeastern part of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, 29 year-old Habitamu Dagne knows well the positive impact Reppie Waste-to-Energy Plant has brought to neighboring communities and the entire city.
The power plant, first of its kind in Africa, kicked off operations in August 2018 after almost four years of construction. It sits on seven hectares of a total 37 — the 50-year-old Koshe dump site that served as Addis Ababa's only landfill.
Owing to the cheap cost of living and availability of recyclables to collect for income, many families including Dagne's relocated to the area, with some even building makeshift houses on top of the landfill.
"We had to put up with the bad smell emanating from the waste, as well as smoke from the frequent fires either erupting from the methane gas produced by the decomposing trash or started by scavengers in attempts to separate metals from plastics," Dagne said.
A major tragedy struck the dumpsite in March 2017, when a landslide killed 115 people living in the locality and injured several.
In addition to tragedies, respiratory infections and related diseases were common in the community.
"While I earned good money from buying plastic waste and metals from scavengers, the poor environment was harsh on my health. I lost count of the number of times I visited hospital due to respiratory diseases," said Dagne, who is now employed by CNEEC as a driver.
Melsew Yinunie, a liaison officer at Alert Hospital about two kilometers from the dumpsite, said since the establishment of the Reppie Waste-to-Energy facility, cases of food poisoning due to consuming dumped leftovers as well as respiratory infections have gone down.
"Judging from reduction of such cases in the hospital, it's appropriate to say the plant has contributed a lot to the health improvement of neighboring communities," he said.
Constructed by China National Electric Engineering Co Ltd, or CNEEC, jointly with Cambridge Industries Ltd on a turnkey basis on behalf of Ethiopian Electric Power, the plant has provided improved environmental management of the landfill and sustainable management of municipal solid waste in the city.
According to Cambridge Industries Energy, the Reppie facility has adopted modern back-end flue gas treatment technology which ensures almost all the nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, heavy metals and dioxins produced by the plant are drastically reduced. It ensures the plant operates safely within the strict emission limits of the European Union.
The $120 million facility, located 8 kilometers from the African Union headquarters, was fully financed by the Ethiopian government.
CNEEC is currently in charge of the facility's operations and maintenance, and is carrying out on-the-job training of Ethiopian employees in preparation to handover the operations to Ethiopia in 2021.
Sun Zhongpeng, operations and maintenance manager at CNEEC, said the power plant has an annual capacity of 185 gigawatts.
Sun said the plant receives 1,800 tons of waste per day from across Addis Ababa and incinerates 1,400-1,500 tons daily, generating over 600 megawatts of power.
He said the leachate water is treated for recycling. Each day they treat 100-200 tons of leachate water, and plans are underway to pipe the water to the local community for irrigation purposes.
To completely eliminate scavenging, Ethiopian Electric Power plans to give bottom ash, a solid by-product of the incineration process, to neighboring communities for use as a building material.
Currently, the plant employs 60 Chinese staff and 45 permanent Ethiopian staff who are in on-the-job training and about 30 temporary staff, Sun said.
Sun said delegates from other African countries have been visiting the power plant, and many have expressed interest in having similar projects in their countries.
"We are currently in discussion with Egypt to construct a similar facility in the country. We look forward to doing similar projects in African countries along the Belt and Road Initiative," Sun said, adding they have constructed similar facilities in China and Thailand.
Waste incineration is popular in Europe, where nearly one quarter of all municipal solid waste is incinerated. France alone has 126 waste-to-energy plants, while Germany has 121 and Italy 40.
Editor:Cherie
