BANGKOK - Thai academics have urged the authorities to slow down their large-scale waste-to-energy development policy, as it could severely harm the country's environment and people's health.
In order to deal with this issue, Gen Anupong said the authorities have come out with more policies to push investments in waste-to-energy plants, such as allocating more quota for power purchase from waste-to-energy plants in the latest Power Development Plan, from the previous quota of 500MW to 900MW, so as to encourage more private investment in waste-to-energy projects.
Mr Sonthi Kotchawat, a leading environmental health expert, warned the country's environment could not get cleaner by hastily investing in waste-to-energy plants. Instead, such careless development would trigger even larger impacts from hazardous pollution caused by waste power plants' low environment protection standards and poor management.
Mr Sonthi said the government's idea to solve the country's chronic waste problem could be pushed by jointly investing in waste-to-energy plants with private companies, who can provide the funding and technology that the authorities lack. "Since the environmental protection standard of these new small waste-to-energy plants has been set at the minimum level, this solution - if it were to be fully implemented - would pose a risk to people from severely hazardous pollutants such as dioxin, while the leftover substances from garbage burning such as heavy metals and PM2.5 dust particles would contaminate the environment long after the plants are closed.
"This is because the investors of small waste-to-energy plants usually do not have enough budget to invest in expensive but efficient pollution-trapping system that is compulsory for larger waste-to-energy plants. So, these small waste-to-energy plants cause a lot of pollution," he said.