On a recent hot and humid autumnal day, I ticked a peculiar item off of my bucket list of sites to see in Hong Kong: the city’s first, and purportedly one of the world’s largest, sewage sludge incineration plants.
Sludge is the solid(ish) organic matter left over from sewage treatment. Ordinarily, sludge is disposed of in landfills but at T-Park, which opened in 2016 and is operated by French waste management Veolia, sludge is incinerated to generate electricity.
For most people, a sludge incineration site doesn’t sound like the ideal day out, but T-Park was designed to entice visitors. Situated in Hong Kong’s remote west coast, where the mountains meet the sea, T-Park houses a bird sanctuary, landscaped gardens, and a spa—featuring thermal pools heated by the energy produced from incinerating sludge. T-Park also offers guided educational tours of its facilities.
According to the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department, the purpose of pitching T-Park as a tourist destination is to “[educate] the public on the benefits of using modern [waste to energy] facilities.”
Sadly, Hong Kong’s ongoing COVID restrictions mean the spa was closed when I visited and, while the gardens are pretty, they don’t exactly smell like roses. The guided educational tour was the only thing left, and here it is.
T-Park says it burns 1,300 tonnes of sewage sludge per day, generating enough electricity to power the facility itself as well as producing a surplus, which T-Park sells to the grid. The park claims it generates enough extra energy to power 4,000 homes a day while reducing the volume of sludge, which would otherwise go to landfill, by roughly 90%.
Of course, combusting sludge produces carbon too but, those emissions are net-zero because the waste is organic matter.
However the government is leveraging the good optics of T-Park to push forward with plans for the city’s first trash incinerator, dubbed I-Park, due to come online in 2025. Location scouts are already searching for a place to develop a second.
The government says the incinerator is necessary to meet the city’s “Zero Landfill” ambitions as well as its goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. For that to work, the new incinerators will have to be fitted with still-unproven carbon capture tech, and Hong Kong is pushing on with its plan at the same time the EU is scaling back its own incinerator ambitions.
According to the International Energy Agency, waste-to-energy incinerators (most of which burn trash, not sludge) generate approximately 2.4% of the EU’s total energy supply, powering roughly 18 million homes. But news site Clean Energy Wire calculates WtE plants emit almost double the average volume of greenhouse gas per unit of energy produced, compared to the continent’s overall grid network.
“Once we phase out coal, incineration becomes the most polluting source of energy,” Brussels-based NGO Zero Waste Europe tells Clean Energy Wire.
While advocates of industrial trash burning argue that the process eliminates methane emissions that would be produced if the garbage was simply sent to landfill, critics of WtE argue that building incinerators distracts from the more important task of reducing and recycling waste. Case in point: the U.K. burns 45% of its waste—including 11% of waste earmarked for recycling.
Despite setting a target to reduce landfill waste 90% by 2035, the EU is now moving to eliminate funding for new WtE incinerators, deciding it is better to promote recycling. Like oil refineries, today’s waste incinerators should prepare for a future of dwindling supply.
Eamon Barrett
greeninc.news@gmail.com
@eamonbarrett88
CARBON COPY
Tiers for ESG
The U.K. financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), proposed new rules Tuesday to clamp down on greenwashing in the investment industry, outlining a new three-tiered system for categorizing more sustainable investments. The three tiers would distinguish portfolios that are currently “sustainable” and those that aspire to be. The new regulations would also set higher criteria for fund managers that want to label products with terms like “green” and “ESG.” FT
Green jet fuel
A company is poised to become the first to create “sustainable” jet fuel at a cost similar to kerosene, after the Bill Gates-led green energy fund, Breakthrough Energy, furnished it with a $50 million grant. LanzaJet, the startup that received the funding, produces Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) out of ethanol derived from Brazilian sugarcane, Chinese waste gas and U.S. corn feed. LanzaJet says its SAF could emit 85% less greenhouse gas than traditional fuel. Bloomberg
HSBC's greenwash
In its first ruling against greenwashing, U.K. advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), banned two HSBC ads last week for “misleading” the public about the bank’s work on tackling climate change. The ads promoted work HSBC was undertaking to combat climate change, such as funding tree planting schemes. However, the regulator upheld complaints from the public that the ads "omitted significant information about HSBC's contribution to carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions." Viewers of the ads, the ASA said, would not expect HSBC to be engaged in both environmentally beneficial and destructive work. Fortune
Top soil
Colorado-based startup Perennial is using satellite imagery to measure the volume of carbon stored in agricultural lands, hoping to use the data to fund a carbon credit market for regenerative farming. At a global scale, the top meter of soil holds more than three times the volume of carbon currently in our atmosphere. Regenerative agricultural practices can help store even more carbon inside topsoil, but transitioning to regenerative farming has a steep upfront cost for farmers. Perennial hopes its carbon credit tech can lower that barrier to entry. Wired
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Ignore the analysts’ misinformation oil slick: Biden is making real progress on energy by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
CLOSING NUMBER
27.5%
Over the past twelve months, Chile has generated more power from wind and solar than from coal, marking the first year in the country’s history where the two renewables have outperformed coal. Between September 2021 and October 2022, Chile generated 27.5% of national electricity supply from wind and solar, edging out coal, which accounted for 26.5% of total production. Chile’s wind and solar capacity has doubled since 2018 and, since 2016, the rise in wind and solar generation has matched the county’s increase in electricity demand.
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