Sofia hosts major event focusing on energy efficiency, renewables and recycling
By Nathan Johnson
Decentralised energy & other solutions
Decentralised energy (DE) was the main topic of one of the event's main panel discussions. Basically, DE is the production of power near the point of use, though it is not technology-specific. According to David Sweet from the US-based World Alliance for Dentralized Energy (WADE), such energy schemes can produce power that is 70 percent cleaner and 50 percent cheaper in terms of delivery. Remote electricity generation, for example, involves power being transmitted over sometimes great distances at high voltage before being put to use.
DE production may derive from fossil fuels, while clean or renewable energy sources might be employed in a centralised energy system. Sweet suggests that micro-hydrology offers some interesting possibilities in the US, but that recent discoveries of shale gas deposits that could yield a 150-year supply might mean that this type of fossil fuel will be easier to procure. It is difficult to say whether such exploitation will be beneficial in the long term, as it could lessen any sense of urgency to develop renewable sources of energy. It seems clear, however, that any long-range plans for energy security and environmental safety should be to combine decentralised energy production systems that use all or mostly renewable sources.
Representatives from two companies involved in the manufacture of new energy-producing/saving technologies applicable within a DE context were: Thomas Stenhede, representing Wartsila, a Finland-based producer of combustion engines; and Hank Haaring from Netherlands-based Dorset Green Machines.
Stenhede noted that Wartsila is the leading supplier of flexible power plants for DE power generation market for the oil & gas industry. Specialising in combustion engines, Stenhede said that Wartsila builds power plants, either for power generation only or combined heat and power (CHP) generation, ranging in size from a single megawatt to hundreds of megawatts. Smartly designed plants are capable of adapting to consumption peaks and valleys, and a decentralised system can close units down one by one, when necessary - something that a centralised system is incapable of doing, Stenhede concluded.
Biomass is becoming an increasingly important source of renewable energy, but it is not always used efficiently. Haaring demonstrated the low-energy drying techniques his company utilises residual heat from 'green' power production plants to convert wet or waste products into dry biomass for renewable energy. With a Dorset drying system in place, energy use for drying sewage sludge can be reduced by up to 90%, Haaring claims. After drying, substrates from biogas plants, poultry manure, animal feed, wood chips, sawdust, sewage sludge and concentrated fluids can afterwards be compressed into pellets or other compact forms that will burn more efficiently as fuel. Integrated processes such as these are important in moving towards DE energy schemes.
Of course, efficient energy production must be coupled with energy-efficient buildings. Sufficient progress in either retrofitting older buildings or constructing new, zero-energy buildings will increase the viability of DE strategies by diminishing required energy capacity to power a given community or district. Sebastian Moreno-Vacco, an architect from Brussels, spoke about 'passive house' construction trends and ambitions in Belgium, while Peter Op't Veld spoke of an experimental architectural design community in the Netherlands called the 'District of Tomorrow'.
Belgium has some of Europe's most ambitious plans for passive house construction. While the country's first passive house was built in 2003, there are now 250 completed units, with another 1,000 being built, said Moreno-Vacco. The architect outlined some very ambitious plans in his country for passive house construction, saying that the Brussels-Capital Region government has agreed to impose passive house standards for all buildings, whether domestic or public, by January 1, 2015; and that the same is to be imposed in the Walloon and Flemish regions by 2017 and 2019, respectively. Time will tell how this plays out.
Op't Veld from Cauberg-Huygen Consulting Engineers, in a discussion about the importance of educating architects and engineers in energy-efficient building design, pointed to a project in Heerlen, The Netherlands as an example of what future communities might look like. Run by students at Zuyd University, DoT is a plot of land allocated for the construction of four buildings, each a winning design selected each year between 2008 and 2011. Each of the buildings fits one of four design criteria: basic design, climatic design, integrated-system design, and exergetic principles design. It is hoped that students involved in this project will become leading professionals that will play important roles in transforming the building sector.
Op't Veld works primarily as a coordinator of Master and Post-Graduate education and training for implementing the Energy Performance and Buildings Directive. Participating education institutions throughout the CEE region include: University of Zagreb (Croatia), Czech Technical University in Prague, Pecs Technical University (Hungary), Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and University of Ljubljana (Slovenia).
W2E
A main theme to emerge during the April 14 panel discussions on waste to energy (W2E) was that the context is different for each country, and depends primarily on three factors: legal framework, economic conditions and public opinion. These factors were discussed throughout the day in greater or lesser detail, while yet other speakers introduced some of the latest W2E developments and technology.
Kunio Yoshikawa from the Tokyo Institute of Technology defined waste as "unutilised resources", and noted that the ability to produce useful fuels and electricity from biomass and waste resources is a way that financially strapped countries can maximise income. And while there are various W2E solutions depending on the type of waste and technology involved, Yves Noel, a German thermal-treatment expert teaching at Aachen University pointed out that successful recycling efforts lead to diminished waste inputs to certain types of treatment facilities. Thus careful planning is required so that treatment plants are not built on too large a scale.
Agricultural waste, on the other hand, represents a significant source of energy, but biomass boilers, such as those in Beceg and Sid in Serbia, also need to be built on an economy of scale because collection of agricultural waste is notably difficult, according to Goran Blagojevic from Serbia-based consultancy firm Pediment.
Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) is a fairly new waste management technology used by a growing number of local authority waste disposal contractors eager to avoid shipping waste (especially organic waste) to landfills. There are currently an estimated 50 MBT facilities in Germany alone. As composting and anaerobic digestion are common phases of MBT technology, the fraction of waste that is landfilled is both reduced and made less hazardous. One MBT facility in Varna, Bulgaria, for example, landfills 35.8 percent of its intake following a pre-treatment process, according to Iris Steinberg from Kompoferm Systems.
As MBT facilities tend to maximise recycling and re-use of waste materials, they are far more popular with the public than incinerators, though waste facility construction of any type is very difficult to sell to the public. Grzegory Wielgosinsky from the Technical University of Lodz addressed this problem concerning his native Poland, which currently landfills 86.8 percent of its waste and has just one W2E plant in the entire country.
With Poland required to close 300 landfills by the end-2011, waste disposal alternatives are a must, but Wielgosinsky is wary of domestic hostility to such alternatives that goes even beyond NIMBY ('not in my backyard'), which he refers to as the 'BANANA' syndrome: i.e. 'build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything'. Start-up costs for landfill alternatives are another obstacle, but solutions will need to be found if Poland's percentages of recycling (8.9 percent), composting (3.9 percent) and incineration (0.4 percent) are to grow in the very near future.
While much smaller in geographical size and population than Poland, Slovenia faces waste management challenges of its own. Viktor Grilc from the University of Ljubljana claims that Slovenia's national waste management strategy, adopted in 1996, is outdated and must be reworked to accommodate new techniques and strategies. Slovenia produces approximately 1 million tonnes of industrial waste per year, 10 percent of which is hazardous. Of the total collected municipal waste, 85 percent is unsorted. Of this total, 80 percent is landfilled and 20 percent is recycled - far below the EU15 average. On the other hand, there is not large-scale incineration of hazardous waste in Slovenia, while there are many municipal and local power plants using clean biomass. Grilc estimates that there is natural potential for 10 times the amount of current biomass production.
Recycling
An afternoon panel discussion on recycling ranged from local and national strategies (e.g. in Bulgaria) to specific technologies related to specific products for recycling (rubber tyres, CRT glass and photovoltaic waste). While not linked in any particular way, the variety of presentations was helpful in offering some insight into some of the complexities and opportunities involved where recycling is concerned.
Pieter Bartels, commercial director at Maltha Glasrecycling Nederland, spoke about the unique qualities of glass that make it ideal for recycling. To begin with, he said, glass is "eternally recyclable": in other words, the material recovery rate is 99.9975 percent. While heat-resistant glass is more difficult to recycle, requiring temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius, recycling of one tonne of glass can typically save 1.4 tonnes of raw materials from being exploited, Bartels explained. The recycling of glass over time also saves billions in landfill and incineration costs, and loss of glass in any case is due only to lack of collection.
As mentioned earlier, the intake of some waste treatment facilities will drop as more waste is recycled. There are also types of waste that are linked to certain types of products that will eventually, and inevitably, be phased out of production. Thomas Oberle runs a company in Germany that specialises in recycling cathode-ray tube (CRT) glass, formerly an industry standard in the manufacture of television picture tubes and screens and computer monitors. Separating the CRT glass, which has high lead content, from the other waste components is a fairly complex, multi-stage process, but does result in secondary raw materials used for glass fibre insulation, glass tiles, glass plates and ceramic glazing. With six plants cleaning and separating an estimated 100,000 tonnes annually of separated material, Oberle claims that he is in a business that will remain attractive for at least ten more years.
With the number of motor vehicles on the road today, it's hardly surprising that old tyres are a significant source of waste. The Landfill Directive of 2003 prohibits the landfilling of untreated tyres, and according to Manfred Chittke from Amandus Kahl GmbH in Germany, roughly 3.2 million tyres are treated each year to separate tyre materials. This not reduces the amount of pollutive waste either stored or burned, but sees much of the former tyre processed for other kinds of re-use. A typical tyre is made from 60-65 percent rubber, 15 percent textile and 20 percent steel. Treating a tyre involved pre-shredding (which produces tyre chips), granulation, steel separation and rubber classification for cleaning. End-product impurities typically range from between 10-25 percent, though Chittke's claims that his company's Kahl System has reduced this amount to just 3 percent, which results in the end product being 3-5 times greater in comparative value than that other end products available on the market.
Virginia Gomez from Belgium-based PV CYCLE spoke about making the PV industry "double green" by recycling photovoltaic panels. PV CYCLE is a not-for-profit partnership established in 2007 with 190 full members comprising PV manufacturers and importers. This organisation has established certified collection points for silicon, non-silicon and thin-film PV industry products. Gomez says the PV CYCLE aspires to an 85% take-back rate by 2015, and in doing so hopes to "implant producer responsibility" and also to involve civil society. Take-back numbers are small at present (just 186 tonnes thus far for all of Europe), but this is likely to improve as the solar industry continues to develop and gain in popularity.
An influential not-for-profit at work in the SEE region is the Bulgarian Association of Recycling (BAR), whose chairperson Temenuzhka Kostova talked about some of the current conditions and future goals concerning recycling in Bulgaria. Kostova mentioned that Bulgaria, despite its old vehicle fleet, "leads the Balkans with respect to end-of-life vehicles 'relative to development.'" The country recycles annually at present 42,000 tonnes in 11 waste groups. Kostova added that the country not only met but exceeded its 2010 goal of 4 kilograms of waste recycled per capita. The use of tri-colour collection bins for metal, paper and glass is more widespread, and other responsibilities are being transferred to private operators. Kostova stressed the need for transparent decisions and integrated approaches, empowering regional inspectorates and the ability to impose sanctions against offenders.
