State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid asked Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (SREDA) on Sunday to come up with specific solutions to utilise waste materials for generating electricity.
"I want proper solutions from SREDA having relevance to our country to use waste materials to produce energy," he said.
Mr Hamid was speaking as the chief guest at a seminar on 'Waste to Energy' organised by the state-run organisation at IEB Auditorium in the city.
He also lamented over wasting too much time to initiate any project to utilise waste for generating energy.
SREDA has been working over the past four years (in this regard), and before that Power Division also worked for long without any successful initiative, the state minister noted.
SREDA should carry out necessary feasibility study for providing specific and proper solutions to mange waste materials to generate electricity for the municipalities as well as for the sub-district areas, he opined.
Currently many investors are coming with a variety of technologies and solutions for implementing 'waste to power' projects, which are too much.
Development partners are also giving the government ideas and knowledge to implement such projects, Mr Hamid further said.
But the reality is that several attempts to implement such projects, even those of setting up small-scale plants having the electricity generation capacity of 1-2 megawatt (MW), could not be successful.
The state minister also said the cost of producing power from waste materials would be high, and (as much as) almost three times higher than the cost of generating electricity from conventional sources.
So, the government would have to provide huge subsidy to buy the power (produced from waste) only to have a social impact, he added.
Officials said some 9,000 tonnes of solid wastes are being generated in Dhaka every day, and to generate 1.0 MW of electricity some 80-100 tonnes of waste are required.
So, around 900 MW of electricity could be generated from the solid wastes of the capital.
The government has planned to implement several waste-based power plant projects in Keraniganj, Kushtia and Narayanganj during its tenure.
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