BRIDGETOWN-A waste-to-en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ty ex­pect­ed to process ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 tonnes of sol­id waste a day, and pro­vide be­tween ten and 14 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty is on the cards for Bar­ba­dos. This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Drainage, Dr De­nis Lowe, who said that Cab­i­net had re­cent­ly ap­proved Bds$377 mil­lion for the cre­ation of a man­grove pond green en­er­gy com­plex.

Along with the waste-to-en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ty, this com­plex will in­clude a so­lar pow­er fa­cil­i­ty, a wind en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ty, the man­grove pond beau­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme, the con­struc­tion of a new me­chan­i­cal main­te­nance fa­cil­i­ty, and the land­fill gas man­age­ment sys­tem.

Lowe said the com­plex formed part of Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme to man­age sol­id waste dis­pos­al and cre­ate en­er­gy op­tions for the coun­try. "What we are al­so go­ing to be do­ing in that pack­age of ser­vices is to de­com­mis­sion cells one, two and three [at the land­fill], and com­mis­sion the new cell four to­wards the end of June," he said.

The projects list­ed un­der the pro­gramme are ex­pect­ed to as­sist with the de­vel­op­ment of the in­fra­struc­ture that is nec­es­sary for achiev­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in the ex­e­cu­tion of sol­id waste man­age­ment in Bar­ba­dos. The in­stal­la­tion of a land­fill gas man­age­ment sys­tem is de­signed to cap­ture the green­house gas­es that can be quan­ti­fied and sold as cred­its in car­bon trad­ing mar­kets.

Such a project would al­so al­low Bar­ba­dos to be a leader in the re­gion in terms of sell­ing its car­bon cred­its.

Caribbean360