Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Modern Power Systems

London's waste to get the plasma treatment: as the quantity of municipal waste in cities worldwide starts to become a serious problem, its hitherto disregarded calorific value is beginning to interest power generation development companies. One such company is planning to bring the plasma treatment process, in a unique combination with fuel cell technology, to bear on London's waste mountain.

Article Excerpt
By enabling the recovery of available energy from low-value materials, gasification technology has the potential to reduce environmental impacts as well as disposal costs. It is flexible and reliable and is an existing clean energy technology. Worldwide gasification capacity is projected to grow 70 % by 2015 and while it is already a well-known technology in the chemical, fertiliser, and coal-to-liquids industries, gasification applications are becoming increasingly diverse. One industry that will likely benefit from this diversification is the electrical power industry. Gasification's environmental and economic benefits suggest a potential solution to the challenges set by renewable energy targets and the need to reduce landfill in the UK, and elsewhere.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Bridging the funding gap

The UK is currently at a crossroads. In his 2009 Budget speech, the UK chancellor announced a new target of a 34% cut in emissions by 2020. Energy efficiency investment received a boost, with [pounds sterling]375m promised in extra spending, and another [pounds sterling]70m was set aside for decentralised and small-scale low-carbon energy. The Chancellor also announced [pounds sterling]405m for low-carbon industries and green manufacturing. Alongside this, UK energy projects could get up to [pounds sterling]4 bn from the European Investment Bank, although this figure is far from certain as the EIB does not allocate funds by country, but to individual projects.

While these sums of money may not be mountainous, they are still more than were initially expected, given the current economic climate. This suggests that the government listened to the industry's...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!