IN a brief news item over the weekend, it was announced that the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has established a green energy auction reserve, or GEAR, price for the impending GEA for waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities. The GEAR price is essentially the ceiling price for electricity produced by facilities subject to the auction, and is intended as a guide to prospective bidders so that they can determine whether a project will be economically attractive or not. In this case, the ERC set the GEAR price at P9.2959 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a price that was actually higher than it originally proposed, but is in the same ballpark with GEAR prices in previous auctions for solar and offshore wind.
There is so much wrong with this entire topic that it is difficult to know where to begin. The problem is not with the ERC; it has no control over whatever harebrained scheme the Department of Energy (DOE) decides to launch, but must try to set regulatory parameters for it. The more ludicrous the initiative, the less consumer-sensitive those parameters are going to be; garbage in, garbage out, so to speak. A generation cost of P9.3/kWh results in a bill of about P17.22/kWh for most consumers once transmission, distribution and other charges are added in. Take a look at your own electric bill (my May bill from Meralco carried a charge of P15.57/kWh, a rate that had customers howling bloody murder) and decide for yourself if that is a reasonable price.
The DOE’s green energy auction program (GEAP) has been deeply flawed from the moment it was launched, but this latest round is beyond ridiculous, even if the obnoxiously high indicative price for the power produced is completely disregarded. The DOE is planning to offer 230 megawatts (MW) of WtE capacity in the auction, to be held sometime in August. Every other round of the GEAP has resulted in less capacity than awarded, making it off paper to facilities in operation or under construction, but there is high probability that the amount of WtE capacity that will be built will actually be zero, or some number very close to it.
In a fair and rational world, the phrase “waste-to-energy” would instantly be struck from everyone’s awareness. That is because, and repeat it to yourself as many times as you need to, WtE is not an energy production system, it is a waste management system. That is not simply my crusty opinion, that is the characterization of it by the US Energy Information Agency. Yes, burning municipal waste can produce electricity, but that is a secondary and rather modest by-product.
The main reason for building a WtE system is to reduce the volume of municipal solid waste (MSW) going to landfills. We have a huge problem with landfills in the Philippines, so WtE might be a worthwhile solution for that reason; but in that case, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) should be taking the lead in it, and not the DOE. But we have an energy guy in charge at the DENR and a politician in charge at the DOE, so things work a little differently here.
Math time
A little bit of basic data quickly reveals why WtE won’t work as “green energy” here, especially under the parameters of existing WtE policy, which will be codified in the new WtE law that will almost certainly pass once the Senate stops goofing off and does some real work. Under that policy, only non-compostable and nonrecyclable MSW can be used as WtE fuel, and MSW cannot be imported, either from outside the country or from one waste management jurisdiction to another.
That means of the roughly 60,000 metric tons of MSW created daily in the Philippines, only about 18,000 metric tons, or about 30 percent, is usable for WtE. In a mass-burn system, such as is common in the US, the proportion is closer to 85 percent.
To generate 1 MW of electricity, a WtE plant needs to burn between 1 and 1.6 metric tons of MSW per minute. Thus, if the entire usable volume of MSW of the Philippines was burned, the electrical output would be a whopping 0.3 megawatt-hours (mWh) per day.
You will note that 0.3 is quite a bit less than 230. And even if the policy was adjusted to permit the mass-burn systems, bumping the MSW fuel volume up to about 51,000 metric tons per day, that would still only provide about 0.85 mWh per day. For reference, according to DOE data, the Philippines’ daily electricity consumption averages between 305,000 and 320,000 mWh.
Not actually green
So, how would WtE plants provide the expected 230 MW of capacity? Obviously, by burning something else for fuel, most likely gas or oil. All WtE plants have gas or oil burners in them, which are used to start up the unit by bringing the firebox up to the proper temperature where MSW can burn cleanly (between 830 and 1,400 degrees Celsius), and to add extra heat when necessary to keep the unit at those temperatures.
If the priority is waste management, then this is not really a problem. The conventional burners are used sparingly, and do not contribute greatly to undesirable emissions. However, if the priority is energy production, then unless there is a constant and abundant source of MSW fuel — which, as explained above, there isn’t here — what you have is not “waste-to-energy,” but a conventional gas- or oil-fired generator. And one that is most likely of a capacity that is too low to be economically sensible, except in areas isolated from the main grid, or with even less desirable generation sources, such as diesel or bunker oil generators.
I have long suspected, and some of my learned colleagues have the same suspicion, that the GEAP is less an exercise in building a rational, sustainable RE sector than it is a campaign of political window dressing, like the continual claims of “investment pledges” from trade-related agencies. The utter unreality of the WtE initiative does nothing to assuage those suspicions. As I have said, WtE — or rather, let’s call it what it really is, waste incineration — is an option worth exploring given the Philippines’ critical solid waste management situation. Provided, of course, it can be done safely, and with minimal environmental impact, and done in a way that is complementary to waste-reduction and recycling programs.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
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