The Ecoplanta Molecular Solutions material recovery project in El Morell, the result of a collaboration between Enerkem, SUEZ Recycling & Recovery Spain, and Repsol is one of seven projects pre-selected by the European Commission Innovation Fund for its contribution to the fight against climate change. It is Spain’s sole pre-selected initiative for the European Commission Innovation Fund, which rewards highly creative technology and major European projects that result in considerable reductions in GHG emissions. The European Union commits to assisting the promoters of these highly creative initiatives in their attempts to adopt their technology, in this case, gasification technology, which has been especially emphasised for its creativity, reduction of carbon emissions, and scalability.
The initiative is a breakthrough example of the circular economy, with an emphasis on optimising the transformation of municipal solid waste and promoting recycling and residual material recovery. The new factory will process around 400,000 tonnes of non-recyclable municipal solid waste from neighbouring towns and create approximately 220,000 tonnes of methanol per year. This methanol will be utilised as a feedstock to generate sustainable chemicals or advanced biofuels, lowering GHG emissions by about 200,000 tonnes per year and garbage that would otherwise wind up in landfills. The project, which is set to open in 2025, will give an industrial answer to the rising demand for renewable methanol, which is predicted to increase dramatically in the coming years.
Ecoplanta will contribute significantly to the improvement of residual materials recovery rates in Spain as well as the achievement of the EU’s 2035 targets to reduce the volume of solid urban waste currently going to landfills by recovering waste in a truly circular economy, consolidating itself as a lower environmental impact alternative to incineration.
This initiative will hasten the shift from a linear resource-based economic model to a circular economic model, which is one of our time’s most important economic, political, and social concerns.
CEOforLIFE – We promote life. We support the SDGs
