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The Jakarta administration is planning to build three treatment centers that will use waste to generate energy, Governor Fauzi Bowo said on Wednesday.

“What we want is to turn waste to energy, and this process has already begun,” Fauzi said.

The Cakung Cilincing intermediate treatment facility in North Jakarta, which began operating on Aug. 1., uses mechanical and biological technology to recycle inorganic waste and to ferment organic waste to produce gas that can be used as fuel. After processing, the waste is then sent to a landfill.

The treatment center will be able to process 400 tons of waste daily until the end of the year and 600 tons daily from January. It will reach its full capacity of 1,300 tons in July next year, he said.

When running at full capacity, the Cakung Cilincing ITF will be able to produce 4.95 megawatts of electricity, or 445,669 million metric British thermal units of gas fuel.

Fauzi said that the two other intermediate treatment facilities, would be built in Sunter and Marunda, both in North Jakarta, before the end of the year.

The existing Sunter waste facility, which sits on five hectares of land, will be upgraded into an ITF, Fauzi said.

“We are going to enhance the technology at the Sunter processing station into an ITF,” Fauzi said. “The city sanitation office will cooperate with private sector companies interested in investing.”

The Sunter ITF, Fauzi said, would use technology based on an incinerator that would be capable of reducing the volume of waste by 90 percent, producing a large amount of electricity and significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Eko Bharuna, head of the Jakarta Sanitation Office, said the Sunter project would be tendered in September.

“We are involving the private sector under a build, own, operate and transfer arrangement,” Eko said. “We have chosen this option so as not to burden the regional budget.”

“Besides building the various intermediate waste processing facilities that are capable of handling large amounts of waste, the city administration will also develop reuse, reduce, and recycle centers [Sentra 3R] in Jakarta’s five municipalities,” Fauzi said.

“In the future, all regional developers will have to build their own waste processing facilities,” he added.

He said that several developers, including Pantai Indah Kapuk, had already agreed to build 3R centers in their estates. Pantai Kapuk Indah’s 3R center would use integrated dry anaerobic digestion and composting technology and would be built in cooperation with a private investor and the Tsu Chi Buddhist Foundation, he said.

“The waste at PIK will be processed into electricity and compost,” Fauzi said. “The main difference with the ITF is that the 3R center will have a much smaller capacity, of around 250 tons.”

Another 3R center planned for Pesanggrahan, South Jakarta, will be built with the assistance of the Public Works Office’s environmental sanitation unit, he said.

Fauzi added that the city administration would not go ahead with a plan to build an integrated waste processing plant in Ciangir, in Legok district, Tangerang. The decision came after Tangerang authorities zoned the Ciangir area for residential purposes.

The city had purchased an area of 96 hectares in Ciangir and an environmental impact study was conducted in 1999.

Fauzi said that while the Tangerang administration had proposed a land swap, suggesting an area in Jatiwangi, closer to Jakarta, the city authorities preferred to develop the Ciangir land into residential estate in line with the new zoning requirements.

With the Ciangir ITF center scrapped, he said, the city would now have to rely on the three planned ITFs.

“With these three ITFs and the Bantar Gebang landfill, Jakarta’s waste problem will be solved for the next decade, as their cumulative processing capacity will be more than 8,000 tons per day,” he said.