Page 27 - Waste-to-Energy in the Danube Strategy Region. Challenges and Prospects

2.3 Infrastructural

The most common energy outputs from WtE projects are heat and electricity. Because different

WtE plants have various requirements for complementary infrastructure, this section presents the
infrastructural challenges to successful implementation of WtE technologies.

Within this context, WtE projects can face problems such as insufficient grid

interconnection and associated infrastructure or occurrence of technical and capacity problems
within the site. For plants generating heat, the facilities also need to be in close proximity to

consumers in order to avoid relative heat loss caused by long transmission (over 30%).Such plants
are thus primarily built near larger municipalities, while district heating systems are especially

beneficial (Masatin et al. 2016, Persson and Münster 2016). Furthermore, access to infrastructure
in comparison to other producers of heat or electricity is also of relevance. Relative access mainly

depends on the ownership of the competing plants and the authority deciding about access

issues.

The problems mentioned above can appear within a wide scale of WtE projects.
Specifically, the problem with access to infrastructure in comparison to other energy producers

can be found, for example, in the case of the Czech incineration facility in Brno. As the municipal

authority in Brno is the owner of both the incineration plant and heating plant, the authority

decides on the participation of both producers in Brno’s district heating system. The current
situation shows poor optimization, whereby the gas-powered plant for district heating has priority

access over heat generated by the WtE facility, thus lowering the plant’s efficiency and energy

output. The owner primarily uses the WtE plant for waste disposal, but not harnessing its energy

output indicates poor implementation of this technology. In such cases where competitors are
given preferential access, WtE plants do not have sufficient opportunity to fulfil their capacity

(Suzova 2018).

As the challenge is the use of the generated heat, the plant’s siting process must navigate

between optimal location in terms of the waste supply chain and optimal location in terms of heat
delivery, i.e. close to industrial facilities or large municipalities with significant heat requirements.

That is why WtE facilities are often placed near capital cities, such as Budapest, Prague, Vienna or

Project co-funded by the European Union
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