Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar said it plans to build a cutting-edge waste-to-energy plant in Sharjah, UAE, in partnership with Bee’ah, a leading environmental management company in the Middle East.

Announcing this today at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2017, Masdar said diverting as much as 300,000 tonnes of solid waste from landfill each year, the project will help Sharjah reach its “zero waste-to-landfill” target by 2020.

This will also help the UAE deliver on its 2021 goal of diverting 75 per cent of solid waste from landfills, said Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, the chief executive of Masdar, after signing the agreement with Khaled Al Huraimel, Group CEO of Bee’ah.

As per the deal, Masdar and Bee’ah will collaborate on the development of the facility that will incinerate up to 37.5 tonnes of solid waste per hour to create 30 megawatts (MW) of energy.

This will add more power to what is produced by Bee'ah's auxiliary waste-to-energy project, which will eventually produce a total of 90 MW and will be supplied to the Sharjah electricity grid, said Al Ramahi.

“As one of the leading renewable energy developers in the Middle East & North Africa (Mena), we are proud to enter into a partnership with Bee’ah that will both diversify our clean energy portfolio and help commercialize sustainable solutions to Sharjah’s and the UAE’s waste management challenges,” said Al Ramahi.

Al Huraimel said the deal marks the first venture in the realisation of the partnership that it had announced with Masdar last year.

"The cutting-edge waste-to-energy plant in Sharjah is a concrete example of what this strategic partnership will deliver to the UAE and the communities that we serve. We, at Bee'ah, have always been driven by our mission to make the UAE an icon of environmental best practices, and this plant will help us achieve our ambitious environmental goals for the emirate," he noted.

This agreement will lead to more projects and bold initiatives that will help the partnership to ensure a sustainable and green future for the UAE, added Al Huraimel.

Established in 2007, Bee’ah collects 2.3 million tonnes of waste from nearly one million households in Sharjah each year, diverting around 70 per cent of its collected waste to its recycling waste management facilities from landfill.

"With GCC countries having among the highest rates of per-capita waste production in the world, sustainable waste management solutions are both critically important and a clear business opportunity," remarked Al Ramahi.

"Masdar will combine its proven expertise in renewable energy project development over the last ten years with Bee’ah’s track record in environmentally responsible waste management, to deliver a project that will catalyze further investment in waste-to-energy infrastructure in the UAE and beyond," he added.

Masdar said its clean energy division is a leading developer and owner of utility-scale, grid-connected projects; remote applications providing energy access to communities away from the electricity grid; and carbon abatement projects.

Since 2006, Masdar has invested in renewable energy projects with a combined value of $8.5 billion; Masdar’s share of these projects is $2.7 billion.

Masdar’s renewable energy projects span the UAE, Jordan, Mauritania, Egypt, Morocco, the UK, Serbia and Spain. The electricity generating capacity of these projects, which are either fully developed or under development, is 2.7 gigawatts (GW).-TradeArabia News Service