Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) is planning to tender the UAE’s first waste-to-energy facility in the second quarter of 2013, Saif al-Sayari, the company’s head of energy solutions, has revealed.

Taqa is developing a 100MW plant in Abu Dhabi in a joint venture with the emirate’s Centre for Waste Management (CWM). The project will use 1 million tonnes a year (t/y) of municipal waste out of the emirate’s total 6 million t/y landfill generated.

“We are now doing a bankable feasibility study that will be over very soon, then we will move on to the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase,” Al-Sayari told the MEED Abu Dhabi 2012 conference on 20 November.

“We are assessing three locations – all in the path of landfill or physically in the landfill area. It is within the ongoing study,” he added.

The joint venture partners launched an initial study two years ago to select the technology for the facility, finally settling on an incineration process after successful similar projects developed in India and Morocco.

Taqa is targeting at 8 per cent reduction in landfill in Abu Dhabi by 2030. Abu Dhabi currently generates about 33,000 tonnes a day (t/d) of waste. About 20,000 tonnes of this is construction and demolition waste.