Oslo: A City That Turns Garbage Into Energy Copes With a Shortage

Oslo, Bjørvika, Henrik Lindblom / Habitat Norway
Oslo, Bjørvika, Henrik Lindblom / Habitat Norway

OSLO — A city that imports garbage. Some comes from England, some from Ireland. Some is from neighboring Sweden. It even has designs on the American market.

“I’d like to take some from the United States,” said Pal Mikkelsen, in his office at a huge plant on the edge of town that turns garbage into heat and electricity. “Sea transport is cheap.”

Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn.

Read the full article in New York Times, “A City That Turns Garbage Into Energy Copes With a Shortage”

Written by John Tagliabue, published April 29, 2013

Can this system in Norway act as a model for informal settlements with massive waste and garbage challenges? Read the article, recently published in The New York Times.  Please note that the next Infrastructure 2013 Seminar will be focusing on electricity, 12th of June in Oslo.