New waste processing plants will be built in the cities-millionaires
The Head of the Ministry of Environmental protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Nikolay Zlochevskiy gave an interview to ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’ newspaper. During the meeting, a number of important questions was addressed, namely:
- Reforming the system for monitoring emissions.
- Benefits of the new monitoring system, and how it will reduce the frequency of inspections of enterprises and the corruption level of inspection bodies.
- The problem of establishing the Ukrainian system for greenhouse gas quotas accounting, and selling quotas by Ukraine under the Kyoto Protocol.
- Waste utilization: international practice and Ukrainian realities.
Approaching the last question, the minister noted : ‘You know, sometimes I myself mistakenly refer to such plants as to ‘waste incineration plants’, because they utilize plasma technology, which processes waste at high temperatures. Although in fact they are ‘waste processing plants’. In the heart of Vienna there is such a plant, and it does not impair the ecological situation in the city, and besides, it looks pretty good, even admirable. These are new technologies that are used in civilized countries. And we are still operating the ‘Energy’ plant at the Kharkovskiy district of the capital, thus urging the people of the Darnytskiy district to think about wearing gas masks.
Today our main task is the reconstruction of this enterprise and a number of filtration fields. We have already found the money for these projects: they will come from the funds received under the sale of Ukrainian quotas under the Kyoto Protocol.’
The minister also confirmed that the government has the intention to intensify the use of coal in energy production instead of natural gas. And assured that, given a proper implementation of filtering technology, the active use of coal will not bring any noticeable deterioration of ecological conditions: ‘Do not worry, modern equipment allows to clean emissions from burning coal to such an extent that you would not notice the difference. The most important thing is to introduce modern equipment. ‘
