(Bloomberg) -- A Japanese plan to burn waste to generate electricity may help nations overflowing with garbage, but it would also likely complicate global efforts to cut emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Japan is set to promote its homegrown waste-to-power technology when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hosts world leaders at the Group of 20 summit this week. The nation burns more than half its plastic waste for power, and hopes regional neighbors such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which are struggling with swelling volumes of plastic, will buy its technology and know-how.
But plastic waste has a carbon content similar to oil and a bit lower than coal. So while the technology may help reduce the flow of plastics into waterways, implementing it on a large scale could compromise national efforts to meet climate change emission targets, according to Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd., an environmental and waste management consultancy.
Japan's “heavy reliance upon waste incineration for its waste treatment is likely to hinder” efforts to reduce climate change emissions, Ann Ballinger, a consultant with Eunomia said in an email. “Particularly where the treatment of the plastic waste streams is concerned.”
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Japan is promoting its own waste incineration technologies, Masayoshi Kurisu, deputy director at Japan's environment ministry, said in an interview Monday in Tokyo. Residential garbage is a better alternative to fossil fuels because it contains some biomass, according to Kurisu, who didn't address follow-up questions by email about the incinerators' emissions.
The nation has lagged other countries in cutting financing for coal-fired generation overseas amid concern about the dirtiest fossil fuel's contribution to climate change. Japan has also been scrutinized for its plastic use -- it has the second-highest plastic package waste per capita after the U.S. -- offering bags with the smallest of purchases and putting wrappers on single use items like chopsticks.
In the U.K., electricity generating incinerators powered by mixed waste released about 700 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of energy generated, which is a little bit less than the emissions from a coal plant, based on data that is a couple years old, according to Ballinger. The figure may not be representative for the same technology in Asian countries, which have a high food waste content, she said.
There are more than 370 waste-to-power plants operating in Japan, according to the environment ministry's Kurisu. The most advanced facilities that can burn 1,000 tons a day of trash and have a capacity of 16.7 megawatts cost as much as 20 billion yen ($186 million) to build, he added. Japanese companies including Hitachi Zosen Corp. are producing and exporting the facilities.
The global market for burning waste to generate power and heat could be worth $40 billion by 2023, with Asia Pacific experiencing the fastest growth by then, Bloomberg NEF said in an October report, citing the World Energy Council. Japan aims to double exports of waste-management systems to 10 billion yen by 2020 from 2015.
--With assistance from Lisa Du.
To contact the reporter on this story: Aya Takada in Tokyo at atakada2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi at ralrikabi@bloomberg.net, Aaron Clark, Jasmine Ng
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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