A Eurasianet partner post from Mediazona Central Asia

An agreement to build a power plant in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek reinforces the notion that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

The Chinese firm that started construction on the $95mn plant back in March, JunXin, is positioned to reap large profits for decades by using Bishkek’s garbage to generate electricity, an investigation by Mediazona-Central Asia has found. 

Terms of the development deal had not been previously released, but Mediazona found the document text in a publicly accessible database maintained by Chinese stock exchange platform cninfo.com.cn.

The upshot is that when the plant becomes operational in 2025 or 2026, Bishkek city officials will pay the Chinese plant operator up to $17,000 a day to accept as much as 1,000 tonnes of trash a day. The Chinese firm, in turn, will use the waste to generate electricity, and will enjoy the right to sell the power and keep all the profits. The agreement, which has a term of 35 years, sets the payment price that Bishkek city officials will pay the Chinese firm at roughly $17 per tonne.

Initial power-generating capacity is projected to be 20 MW/h. The plant will also generate heating and certain types of building materials, according to the terms of the deal.

The agreement also specifies that the Chinese firm will retain all intellectual property rights connected with the plant’s operation. Kyrgyz officials also are obligated to make landfill space available free of charge for any hazardous byproducts from regular plant operations. 

A clause allows the agreement to be extended for an indefinite period, “if both parties come to such an agreement by the end of the term.” Initial plant capacity will be 1,000 tonnes per day, which generally coincides with the current amount of garbage collected in Bishkek every day, but it can be expanded to up to 3,000 tonnes daily down the road.

Currently, Bishkek’s trash is dumped into a landfill that had been smoldering for decades, polluting the vicinity and harming the health of the approximately 3,000 residents who live in the nearby Altyn Kazyk neighbourhood. The landfill fire was finally extinguished in May 2023.

Three previous efforts since 2013 to build a trash-to-electricity plant never got off the ground, prior to the city’s deal with JunXin.

The Chinese company stands to benefit significantly by generating revenue from accepting trash and from selling the electricity the garbage generates. If the target of 1,000 tonnes of garbage processed per day is met, the company’s investment will pay off in 15 years, leaving at least two decades of pure profit generation.

The financial benefits for Bishkek appear to be limited. While the city will no longer have to operate the landfill, it will still incur approximately $6mn in annual costs to have the Chinese firm take trash off the municipality’s hands. At the same time, city officials claim that the new arrangement will be environmentally friendly, maintaining the plant’s emissions levels will be significantly lower than EU standards for waste incineration plants.

A study undertaken by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, however, suggests that there may be an environmental toll to pay. A team of experts analysed the soil near a plant in Changsha, similar to the one planned in Bishkek, and found an abundance of microplastics. The highest microplastic content was found in the bottom ash.

“The treatment and disposal of bottom ash and fly ash from municipal solid waste incineration is a problem that cannot be ignored,” the authors wrote in the conclusion of their study. “The current results showed that the fly ash and bottom ash generated from municipal solid waste incineration contain microplastics and heavy metals, polluting the surrounding soil environment.”

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.