GREEN ENERGY RECOVERY FROM WASTE IN THAILAND: CURRENT SITUATION AND PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

This article will review the current green energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW) in Thailand (one of the countries in Southeast Asia) in terms of the MSW's characteristics, technologies, implementation of waste to energy plants with public-private partnership (PPP) schemes, perspectives, and challenges. Since the characteristics of waste in Southeast Asian countries reflect the local lifestyle, the separation of waste from the source is very difficult to achieve, which leads to the mixed waste being thrown away into the garbage bins. Therefore, the major compositions are obviously food waste or kitchen waste, which causes the high moisture content and low heating value. The waste to energy technology implemented must overcome this difficulty in order to recover the green energy as well as to control the impact on the environment. Since the technology requires high investment and expertise to operate the plants, the public-private partnerships scheme, which is a new paradigm that allows PPP to co-invest in the waste to energy plants, has been proposed, where the government will not invest in the plant as it was previously done but will let the private investors utilize their own expertise to build the plants and gain revenue in return by the selling of electricity that is recovered from MSW as well as the tipping fee. The government will change its role from the operator to the regulator to supervise and control the operation of the plants. The incentives such as tax exemptions and Feed-in Tariff schemes are provided to help the investors mitigate investment risks resulting from the inconsistent nature of renewable energy sources. It is believed that, by complying with the road-map of waste management of the country, this new business model shall treat the waste properly and recover the green and clean energy from waste and lead the country to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as expected by the United Nations. The review can be shared with waste management paradigms in other countries, especially in terms of proper waste management by PPP schemes.