Contract for world's largest waste-to-energy plant awarded

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The Municipality of Dubai has awarded the build, operate and transfer (BOT) contract for a waste-to-energy plant, set to be the largest in the world, to a consortium comprising BESIX, Belgium's largest construction company, and Hitachi Zosen Inova, an experienced waste-to-energy developer based in Switzerland.

The consortium has also been awarded a 30-year operations and maintenance contract for the project. It plans to invest around EUR700 million (US$867.3 million).

The plant will be located at the waste landfill site in Warsan, Dubai. At full capacity, it will convert 5,000 tons of solid waste per day into energy, producing 171 MW of electricity per hour. This will power around 120,000 homes in the region.

Recovery by heat treatment (incineration, co-incineration, pyrolysis and gasification) will transform waste that cannot be recycled or recovered otherwise into a source of renewable energy. In addition there will be metals recovered and construction materials produced from the bottom ash.

Over the next six months, the BESIX/Hitachi Zosen Inova consortium and its consultants will finalize the design of the project. The construction phase is expected to be launched mid-2018, with partial delivery planned for the World Expo in 2020, and final capacity being delivered in 2021.

The two companies will jointly deliver the engineering, procurement and construction. BESIX will be responsible for the design and execution of the infrastructure works, civil engineering and construction, and the water treatment. 

The construction of this power plant aligns with the Municipality's objectives of reducing the tipping of municipal waste in favour of developing alternative energy sources, in line with the region's environmental protection and sustainable development ambitions. This will also contribute significantly to the achieving the target set out in the UAE's National Agenda's to reduce the number of landfills by 75% by 2021.

This is BESIX' fourth sustainable infrastructure project in the United Arab Emirates, following the Jebel Ali water treatment plant (Dubai, UAE), the Hamriyah power and desalination plant (Sharjah, UAE) and the Safi water reuse station (Ajman, UAE).