Potential to transform waste to biogas in La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia – Challenges and opportunities

This presentation deals with the potential to transform waste to energy in La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia. The urban area of these municipalities is facing problems with waste management, water contamination, land use, and environmental burdens. The existing waste management system is inefficient for recycling and reusing resources since segregation of waste is not common practice. Nevertheless, it represents an opportunity for implementing waste-to-biogas. The existing waste management system can be used to redirect the flow from landfills to biogas plants offering synergies between waste management and energy generation. Many advantages, for example, cost reductions might be achieved through waste-to-biogas in La Paz and El Alto. Currently only 30% of the waste management costs are covered by the collected fees, and thus municipalities are keen to find new ways for recovering costs. Biogas can also replace subsidized fossil fuels, such as domestic fossil gas and imported diesel, leading to environmental gains. Despite these potential benefits, there are policy incentives in other directions, institutional bottlenecks, and socioeconomic constraints that need to be tackled before the existing potential can be realized. In an on-going project led by KTH, we bring together actors along the waste management chain, as well as municipalities and ministries to define a common agenda to promote waste-to-biogas in La Paz and El Alto.
QC 20120607
Waste-to-biogas in Bolivia (homepage: www.biogas-bolivia.proj.kth.se)