The ECOWAS Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) is undertaking an initiative for projects that will focus on turning waste into energy for cities in the member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Public and private stakeholders interested in the call for expressions of interest have until August 28, 2020 to submit their projects.
In the ECOWAS Region, most countries face the challenges of municipal waste collection and disposal. While the municipalities continue facing the challenges of waste management, the urban populations however continue to grow by the day and thereby compounding the existing problems.
The challenges of municipal waste management is characterized by the lack of adequate and sustainable infrastructural services, especially in the new and ever expanding settlements. One of the services that is severely hampering the development of these expanding settlements is the unavailability of adequate energy services. This therefore results in inadequate energy services and hence rationing of the available resource through frequent power outages.
Other infrastructural services such as roads, water and telecommunication services are equally hampered by the expanding urban populations. The expanding urban populations contribute to the current waste management problems as well. The municipalities, who have the ardent task of keeping the cities clean, face numerous challenges in the collection, transportation and disposal of the waste, that is either incinerated in open dumpsites (and often indiscriminately) or left in the open without any proper management system.
To address these problems, ECREEE wants to explore various waste management options that could generate energy from the ‘waste’. In this context, ECREEE intends to select a maximum of 6 WTE projects from municipal waste from cities in ECOWAS member states to carry out pre-feasibility studies.