Romania is losing 100 million tonnes of waste a year

Romania is losing 100 million tonnes of waste a year that could be turned into energy, with most of the waste coming from agriculture, director general of the Ecohornet company Iuliean Hornet told a biomass and biogas conference in Bucharest on Monday. 

"Romania is losing 100 million tonnes of waste a year that could be turned into energy. Most of the waste is coming from agriculture, while household waste is the second largest," said Hornet. 

He argued that the Romanian agriculture can generate three tonnes of pellets per hectare, but Romania is currently using one million tonnes of pellets a year and it has an installed production capacity of 2 million tonnes. 

Hornet said the development of biomass-generated energy technology - the biodegradable part of products, waste and residues from agriculture, animal farming, forestry and related industries as well as the biodegradable part of industrial and urban waste - requires subsidies because initial investment is more expensive and more complicated than in the case of petrol or diesel fuel use. 

Hornet has suggested the Bucharest General Mayoralty and the RADET public heat utility to use such technology in order to reduce the costs incurred on end users and bring down subsidies. 

In order to prove to Bucharesters the efficiency of the system, the company installed four years ago in downtown Bucharest two boilers of an installed power of 0.22 Gcal/h at a 13-story block of flats, using 62.5 tonnes of pellets a year constantly. 

Developed by Codecraftsman