As part of Poland’s ambition to decrease the amount of waste that goes to landfills, Sweco has been commissioned to design a waste-to-energy plant. The plant, that will be located in Warsaw, will be the largest one in Poland and will contribute to the region’s electricity supply. The customer is the municipal waste treatment agency Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Oczyszczania. The assignment is valued at about EUR 3.5 million.

“The effective and clean combustion of waste serves an increasingly important function in Poland, both for the country’s electricity supply and in reducing the share of waste that goes to landfills. Sweco possesses extensive experience in combined heat and power production throughout Europe. In this project we help our customer to make use of a valuable local source of energy”, says Ina Brandes, President of Sweco Central Europe.

Under the framework of the assignment, Sweco will design two process lines and a sorting facility. The plant will annually be able to process 305,000 tonnes of waste and is expected to produce around 148,000 MWh of electricity per year. When operating under combined heating and power generation, the plant will be able to produce about 101,000 MWh of electricity per year and 195,000 MWh of thermal energy per year.

Sweco holds extensive experience in waste-to-energy production and is currently working on similar assignments in four more cities in Poland, as well as in several locations in Germany and Sweden. Under the assignment, experts from Sweco in Poland and Germany will be partnering and provide competence in everything from waste storage and construction to energy recovery and flue gas cleaning.

Sweco’s work will begin in June 2016 and is scheduled for completion by 2020. The new plant is expected to be ready for commissioning in 2019.