Sustainable Waste-to-Energy Development in Malaysia: Appraisal of Environmental, Financial, and Public Issues Related with Energy Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste

Abstract

As Malaysia is a fast-developing country, its prospects of sustainable energy generation are at the center of debate. Malaysian municipal solid waste (MSW) is projected to have a 3.3% increase in annual generation rate at the same time an increase of 3.3% for electricity demand. In Malaysia, most of the landfills are open dumpsite and 89% of the collected MSW end up in landfills. Furthermore, huge attention is being focused on converting MSW into energy due to the enormous amount of daily MSW being generated. Sanitary landfill to capture methane from waste landfill gas (LFG) and incineration in a combined heat and power plant (CHP) are common MSW-to-energy technologies in Malaysia. MSW in Malaysia contains 45% organic fraction thus landfill contributes as a potential LFG source. Waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies in treating MSW potentially provide an attractive economic investment since its feedstock (MSW) is collected almost for free. At present, there are considerable issues in WTE technologies although the technology employing MSW as feedstock are well established, for instance the fluctuation of MSW composition and the complexity in treatment facilities with its pollutant emissions. Thus, this study discusses various WTE technologies in Malaysia by considering the energy potentials from all existing incineration plants and landfill sites as an effective MSW management in Malaysia. Furthermore, to promote local innovation and technology development and to ensure successful long-term sustainable economic viability, social inclusiveness, and environmental sustainability in Malaysia, the four faculties of sustainable development namely technical, economic, environmental, and social issues affiliated with MSW-to-Energy technologies were compared and evaluated.

Renewable Waste-to-Energy in Southeast Asia: Status, Challenges, Opportunities, and Selection of Waste-to-Energy Technologies

“…As a result, there are some difficulties in collecting updated data about their MSW management systems and waste-to-energy sectors; most of these data are not fully accessible. Therefore, the data related to the study were collected, to a feasible extent, from previous research papers [13,17,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], review papers [9,[39][40][41], policy reports by the World Bank [1], the United Nations Environment Programme [12,42], the International Energy Agency [3,7], the International Renewable Energy Agency [43,44], the World Energy Council [15], and other accessible reports. Then, the study synthesized, analyzed, and evaluated data about waste resources, current waste management, and waste-to-energy utilization in Southeast Asian countries in order to highlight a comparison of MSW management systems and the status of waste-to-energy processes among the countries.…”

“…Several studies have, to a reasonable extent, overviewed, analyzed, and evaluated the waste management and waste-to-energy sectors in Southeast Asian countries [1,28], but most have focused on the waste-to-energy sector in specific countries such as Thailand [29,30], Malaysia [31][32][33], Vietnam [17], and Myanmar [13]. Despite some issues such as public perception, public-private partnerships, all stakeholder involvement, funding, and climate factors, some Southeast Asian countries have made a reasonably successful step toward waste-to-energy technologies.…”

“…The incineration plant in Selangor has a capacity of 1000 tons per day or 8.9 MW of electricity generation, and, while in operation with 70% of its actual capacity, it can generate 5 MW of electricity [12]. The total capacity of operating landfill biogas plants registered under the feed-in-tariff (FiT) scheme from 2012 to 2018 was around 13.8 MW, and the planned capacity in three more new projects is about 11.7 MW [32]. Located in Tanah Merah, Negeri Sembilan, the first waste-to-energy plant project is planned to facilitate 1000 metric tons of solid waste daily and to produce 20-25 MW of electricity for powering 25,000 households [22].…”

“…However, there are several requirements and considerations for the selection of suitable technologies regarding waste characteristics, plant sizes, climate and seasonal variations, and economic conditions, as described in Table 3. Waste-to-energy plants such as incineration, pyrolysis, and plasma gasification ones need huge volumes of waste-above 100 tons of waste per day and, at best, 500 tons of waste per day-to sustain the continuous combustion in the furnace of boilers to produce a consistent heat to supply to boilers for steam production [32]. For waste-to-energy production, the AD process can accept a wide range of MSW volumes starting at 25 tons of waste per day, whereas landfilling needs at least a consistent volume of MSW with a capacity of above 500 tons per day to produce a steady stream of electricity supply for the grid [34].…”

“…Some advantages of waste-to-energy technology include that when well-managed, this technology has a smaller plant footprint with a smaller area of land required to operate, a reduction of need for physical waste storage, lower carbon emissions, minimal land contamination, chemically stable by-products from incineration, a higher density of energy recovery per ton of MSW, and the utilization of a domestically-available and sustainable resources for electricity production [5,24,32]. Additionally, it is good for areas with a lack of land for landfills to adopt alternative solutions in some Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Brunei Darussalam [22].…”