At the end of November 2017 I travelled to the Czech Republic and Slovakia to see waste-to-energy plants at work, including a site in Fiľakovo in southern Slovakia.
The question we brought was simple: could this technology work for Mangystau region and other parts of Kazakhstan, where landfills grow and energy demand grows with them? We looked at technology transfer, investment structure, environmental standards and the economics of selling power.
The lesson was that the plant is the easy part. Feedstock contracts, a tariff and a reliable buyer of power decide whether a waste-to-energy project can be financed. It is still the first thing I check today.
