Power, water from garbage

A US company is offering to solve Cebu's waste, power and water problems with a single technology that it plans to introduce for free.

But the Cebu provincial board is not biting just yet.

Finding the offer too good to be true, provincial board member Victor Maambong wants the company investigated.

Global Energy Solutions, through Dan Jose, its director for Asia operations, yesterday titillated the provincial board with a power point presentation on how it can provide a free solution to the growing waste management problem in Cebu while offering to boost power and water supply on the side.

Jose told the Committee on Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources headed by Maambong that GES is willing to build a thermal waste-to-energy converter facility for free provided local governments in Cebu can supply at least 1,200 tons of garbage daily.

For a processing fee of $15 dollars or about P840 per ton of garbage disposed through the facility, Jose said GES will produce 50 megawatts of power and 14,200 gallons of water daily.

Under such a setup, Jose said local governments will be spared the burden of having to spend millions of pesos for waste management programs once they begin to comply with Republic Act 9003 or the Solid Waste Management Act.

This law provides that by February 2006, all open dumpsites in the country will have to be closed down and only sanitary landfills will be allowed to operate.

Jose said that not only are sanitary landfills very expensive to set up, they also require extensive tracts of land to be set aside for the purpose.

To avoid spending millions and setting aside vast tracts of land, Jose said all that local governments need do is sign memorandums of agreement with his company for the setting up of the waste-to-energy converter facility.

Jose said the facility can convert garbage into power using very high temperatures of up to 1,700 degrees centigrade which the garbage itself will fuel. The facility can also produce potable water on the side if needed, he said.

But Maambong said that because the offer was " too good to be true, " there is a need to do further background investigation of the company, especially since it has no operational plant anywhere in the country to date.

Maambong said he fears the offer may just be a scheme to borrow money from financial institutions using local governments as guarantors but Jose assured him GES will neither borrow money nor use any local government as guarantor.

Jose rattled off some corporate names which he claims GES is either a conglomerate member of or a beneficiary of financial guarantees. Jose went so far as to claim prior approval from the World Bank to propose its projects to any takers.

Maambong said if, upon investigation, it is found that GES is legitimate, then his committee may recommend to Governor Gwendolyn Garcia that it do business with the company.

Jose said GES is based in Sarasota, Florida where it was incorporated in 1999 and that the technology it is using is already in use in 20 European and Asian countries.

He explained why GES has no operational plant in the Philippines, saying it was only last April that it was able to get an environmental compliance certificate from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Jose said it will be from the processing fees and from the power that will be generated from garbage and sold that the company intends to recover the $77 million needed to build the facility and eventually make money.

Jose said the technology is environment-friendly.