ISPRA, Italy, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Much of rural Africa remains without electricity. But a solution may be only as far away as the nearest landfill.
A team of European researchers believe there is a tremendous potential for waste-to-energy technology in Africa.
Waste management is poor in most African countries, but researchers in Italy say African cities produced enough solid waste in 2012 to generate 1125 petajoules worth of electricity. By 2025, that number will be 2199 petajoules, or 122.2 terawatt-hours -- that's 20 percent of the electricity used by all of Africa in 2010, enough electricity to power 40 million households.
Of course, only a portion of Africa's total waste is systematically collected. Even so, if the waste currently being dumped in landfills was instead turned into energy, Africans would have had an extra 34.1 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2012.
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Waste-to-electricity technologies mostly involve incineration, converting solid waste to heat energy that powers electricity-producing turbines. But new technologies are improving the conversion process -- some newer, more efficient methods no longer involve incineration.
Of course, waste-burning generates CO2, but those emissions are more environmentally friendly than the alternative -- methane-producing landfills.
Today, most waste-to-energy plants are in Europe, Japan and the United States.
"In Africa, a very limited share of waste is recovered and reused, and only major or capital cities have waste management systems," researchers wrote in a press release.
In their new paper on the subject -- published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews -- researchers argue for the creation of waste-to-energy programs in African countries like Central African Republic, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Somalia.
In addition to creating electricity, and thus lowering the barrier to entry for rural and poor communities, waste-conversion can also diminish the environmental hazards of landfills and unregulated trash-burning.
