Norway needs more waste energy units - report

OSLO - Norwegian industry and environmentalists said yesterday Norway needs to dramatically increase the number of waste energy units beyond the 21 it plans to build within 2010. Under the current plan, only two-thirds of the countrys potential for waste energy would be utilised, a report for the Federation of Norwegian Process Industry (PIL) said. The planned units would only process 870,000 tonnes of waste per year, while total waste energy potential in Norway is 1.25 million tonnes, the report said. "Two-thirds capacity utilisation is far too weak. Also, experience has shown that rarely more than half of the planned units actually get built," Thoralf Thorsen, a spokesman for PIL, said in a press statement with the report. Norwegian-based Bellona, an environmental group, said it feared rotting waste not being recycled for energy purposes could cause great damage to the environment. "It leaks into ground water and rivers, while methane gas is released into the atmosphere. Methane gas is one of the most dangerous climate gases," chairman of the board at Bellona, Olaf Brastad, said in the statement. The report said Norway could drastically reduce the release of damaging climate gases from the use of fossilised fuel by boosting its number of waste energy units. Fresh estimates from PIL showed net waste energy potential in Norway to be almost four terawatt hours (TWh) per year. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE