Waste-to-Energy
- The steam pipeline in Doel
Saving energy in all our activities
Indaver aims to realise rational energy consumption for all its facilities, and tries to cut back on the use of primary fossil energy sources as much as possible.
- Drawing up energy plans for our facilities with ambitious targets to reduce their energy consumption.
- Reducing the carbon footprint of our logistic operations with environmentally-friendly goods vehicles, optimised routes and so on.
- Raising employees’ awareness about their own energy consumption in their working environment, for instance the lighting and heating of the offices.
... and recovering energy from waste
In addition, we use innovative technologies to recover energy from waste.
- Far-reaching energy recovery from the incineration process has enabled a great many of our facilities to operate with almost no more fossil fuel consumption.
- We use the recovered energy in our buildings and facilities or we supply to neighbouring businesses or the electricity grid.
A couple of concrete examples:
- Rotary kiln
Almost half of the waste that is thermally processed in our grate incinerators and fluidised bed incinerators is of organic biological origin and is considered a renewable source of energy. If we take account of the electricity produced and the materials recovered, our grate incinerators and fluidised bed incinerators may be considered climate-neutral.
We can limit the use of fossil fuels in the processing plants by means of a well-considered waste mix. Hence high calorific wastes are used as a substitute support fuel in various plants.
Energy is generated from the waste dumped at the Hooge Maey landfill site in Antwerp, where Indaver is responsible for the operations. The organic-biological components are converted into methane, which serves as a fuel for gas engines that generate electricity.
We systematically reduce the carbon footprint of our logistics. We invest in environmentally friendly trucks, calculate optimised routes and encourage responsible driving by our drivers.
Indaver encourages its staff to use energy sparingly in all its activities. Awareness-raising campaigns draw attention to excessive use of energy as regards lighting, heating and the use of electrical appliances.
We invest in low-energy construction. Thus the new Singelberg building in Kallo was equipped with the newest control system for the optimal use of heating, air-conditioning and lighting.
We encourage our staff to choose energy-efficient company cars. Hence we reduced the authorised CO2 emissions in each vehicle category in 2009. We now also take account of the CO2 contribution and fuel consumption when determining the budget.
In Ireland, Indaver is actively engaged in the development of various Waste-to-Energy projects. Thus the new incineration plant in Meath will recover enough energy to supply 20,000 families. The projects will help Ireland to meet its targets under the Kyoto protocol.
In Germany, enough energy is recovered at AVG’s plants to supply 30,000 families.
