Ethiopia introduces Waste to Energy facility amidst diplomatic queue

By Staff Reporter

19 August 2018 – The project Reppie Waste to Energy of 25 megawatts (MW), which according to Ethiopia is the first of its kind in Africa, was inaugurated on Sunday despite constant disagreement between the contractor Cambridge Industries Ltd (CIL) and his customer Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP).

According to the agreement that the parties reached four years ago, the Reppie waste-to-energy project was designed to produce 50 megawatt (MW) elecrity by Cambridge Industries Ltd from dry waste at Ethiopia's largest landfill, usually " Koshe "mentioned in Addis Ababa.

After installing the necessary machines with the capacity of generating 50 MW of electricity, the contractor has announced that the facility will have an annual production capacity of 185 GWH of electricity of 25 MW.

The contractor also claimed that it happened according to the agreement it had concluded. The EEP

The diplomatic quarrel continued between the two parties, the British company and the state-owned EEP, with the American embassy mediating in Addis Ababa.

The disagreement led to the disruption of work on this project for a year. The project would be completed three years ago.

The Ethiopian authorities finally decided to finish the project, even with reduced production capacity, fearing that the machines would become obsolete and the ever-increasing amount of waste from the capital that would become uncontrollable with time.

At the opening ceremony, President Mulatu Teshome said that Ethiopia foresees that all its people will have access to electricity by 2025. Currently, about 30 percent of the Ethiopian population has access to electricity.

In the meantime, EEP CEO CEO Azeb Asnake called on the municipality of the city for a possible solution to divert part of the waste to another location, because the current operational capacity of the project does not reduce the increasing garbage. can use up.

She also called on residents of Addis Ababa to direct only combustible waste to the landfill. 19659003] In waste-to-energy incinerators, waste is incinerated in a combustion chamber and the resulting heat is used to boil water until it becomes steam, which drives a turbine generator that produces electricity.

For more than five decades, Reppie's landfill has been the only landfill in Addis Ababa.

It should be remembered that 114 people were killed by a landslide at the landfill last year to declare three days of mourning.