Trash-to-Energy Project in Bolivia Wins Funding

Illegally dumped waste pollutes waterways and degrades the quality of life for local residents in Bolivia. "We want to stop dumping waste by providing a value, including biogas technology," says Tomas Lönnqvist, PhD student at KTH.

At the KTH Symposium, the director of the U.S. National Science Foundation explains how scientific co-operation with Sweden benefits American research.

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KTH researchers have received the coveted "Nordic Climate Facility Grant" for a sustainability project in Bolivia that transforms domestic and industrial waste into energy.

Researchers at the Department of Energy Technology at KTH will be granted $684,000 for a joint recycling project in Bolivia aimed at turning waste into energy in the cities of La Paz and El Alto.

The Urban and Industrial Waste to Energy project won the financing over strong competition from other applicants—only 12 of 176 applications to the Nordic Climate Facility Grant received finding. Several projects submitted to the competition were related to Bolivia.

“We will develop a plan for how energy can be extracted from waste in Bolivia,” says Tomas Lönnqvist, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Energy and Climate Studies at KTH. The project will be conducted together with Mälardalen University, a Bolivian municipality, a local Bolivian non-profit organisation and the Swedish municipal waste management company VAFAB.

“We hope that over these coming two years we can contribute to sustainable development in Bolivia by building on previous efforts in the region,” Lönnqvist says.

In addition to Lönnqvist, the research team that will travel to Bolivia from the Department of Energy includes Professor Semida Silveira and PhD student Dilip Khatiwada.

The group’s interdisciplinary work includes the technical and institutional aspects of waste management, transformation technology and policy recommendations.

Nordic Climate Facility is financed by the Nordic Development Fund and implemented in cooperation with the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation.

Katarina Ahlfort