International consortium to operate UAE waste-to-energy plant: A joint venture between Emirati waste management company Bee’ah, UAE renewable energy company Masdar, and French resource management firm Veolia Middle East will operate and maintain the Sharjah waste-to-energy (WtE) plant for 25 years, according to a statement.

About the plant: The WtE facility is currently owned by the Emirates Waste to Energy Company (EWTE), a JV between Bee’ah and Masdar. It can process some 300k tons of municipal waste per year, resulting in a 30 MW production capacity — which will be fed directly into Sharjah’s electricity grid, Masdar notes on its website. This energy could power up to 28k homes and offset roughly 450k tons of carbon emissions every year, the statement notes.

Waste from Bee’ah’s waste management complex will serve as feedstock: Non-recoverable waste from Bee’ah’s integrated waste management complex will be thermally treated, with the heat generated then used to produce electricity. By converting non-recoverable waste to energy, the plant will help increase Sharjah’s landfill waste diversion rate to 100% from its current 76% — making it the first zero waste-to-landfill city in MENA, the statement claims.

We’ve seen Bee’ah up its WtE game lately: Bee’ah subsidiary Bee’ah Recycling recently added a new solid recovered fuel processing facility to its integrated waste management complex, which can produce some 85k tons of green fuel annually — most of which will be sold to Sharjah Cement to power its factories.

Regionally, WtE is picking up interest: A WtE project that could convert some 1.2k tons of municipal solid waste per day to 30 MWh of electricity is being planned in Abu Rawash city, Egypt’s Environment Ministry said in a recent statement. Egypt’s Suez Cement is investing USD 25 mn in plans to generate some 20 MW of power from the waste heat recovery facility at its Helwan plant. Kuwait Municipality approved a refuse-driven fuel project to power up its main cement production plant in October, and Saudi Electricity Company is reportedly planning waste energy-powered projects.