Seoul to turn waste food into energy

By Christian Oliver in Seoul
Published: May 7 2009 18:32

South Koreans are not cleaning their plates of fermented cabbage and spicy octopus, so the government is calling in foreigners for help.
Residents of South Korea, Asia’s fourth largest economy, produce more than 13,000 tonnes of food waste a day, a figure that has been rising about 3 per cent a year. The figure is set to grow under new health regulations that will punish restaurateurs for taking uneaten food back to the kitchen rather than discarding it. The spicy waste is banned from landfills because of the methane it produces as it decays, while dumping at sea, the current disposal method of choice, is to be prohibited from 2013.

To cope with the looming mountain of discarded food, local authorities are issuing tenders to foreign companies to build plants to convert the waste into biogas. New Zealand’s Greenlane is working with Swedish Biogas to build a pilot plant in Seoul to produce biogas for use in vehicles in what they say will be the biggest such project in the world. Erik Danielsson, founder and principal shareholder of rival Scandinavian Biogas, says his company has orders in hand worth SKr750m ($95m, €71m, £64m) and is in talks with 16 cities for plants.
The government’s “green new deal” is providing Seoul with a number of opportunities to combat foreign perceptions of the country as a difficult and sometimes hostile place to do business as it taps technologies developed overseas. In addition to the biogas plants, Scandinavian and German companies have signed preliminary deals to build solar panels, wind turbines and lithium ion batteries.
South Korea’s existing 13 biogas plants process only 2,210 tonnes of food and livestock excrement a day, about 15 per cent of the waste generated. The environment ministry says it has provided Won28.6bn ($23m, €17m, £15m) for six additional plants this year.
Mr Danielsson said a plant that Scandinavian Biogas is building in the southern port of Ulsan would hit full capacity in September, processing 180 tonnes of food waste a day, up from a current 40 tonnes. Its capacity will subsequently be expanding to 240 tonnes.
Although South Korea will earn carbon credits for its biogas push, the plants are not expected to make much of a dent in energy import bills. State power provider Kepco announced last month it would build Korea’s biggest biogas plant, with capacity of 1,500 KW. By comparison, a single unit at one of its nuclear power stations produces nearly 700 times more energy.
Additional reporting by Kang Buseong
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009