On the face of it, waste-to-energy projects are promoted as reducing the environmental impact of using coal or in line with initiatives to prevent wastage.
But burning waste for energy can also have negative consequences. It can even, in the worst cases, legitimise the generation of waste when redesigning production to avoid waste might be more useful.
Certain wastes (like biomass such as agricultural waste) can be safely burned to produce energy. Bio-digestion to produce gas for fuel and/or compost is an even better idea.
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Energy and waste
A brief published by Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Project by EarthLife Africa investigated the trend of burning waste instead of coal to generate power in South Africa. The brief reviewed various proposals and questioned the safety and environmental claims made by proponents of various projects.
EarthLife Africa pointed out that when you have to choose between burning, recycling or reusing material, the question to ask is “how much energy was used to create the material” and then “how much is available at the end of the product’s life cycle for reuse, recycling or burning”.
It suggested that an alternative to burning waste to create energy is to separate the waste at source. This needs government policies to incentivise people to get behind the idea.
Of reference Nigeria: From farm waste to firm power
Country policies around waste to energy in Africa
South Africa has the most developed, though incomplete policy architecture for managing waste and potentially turning it into energy.
- A 2021 amendment to the Electricity Regulation Act makes it easier for waste-to-energy and biogas projects to get connected without full Nersa licencing;
- A National Biogas Strategy from the SA Biogas Industry Association proposes tariffs to reward organic-waste recovery; and
- the National Waste Management Strategy (2020) prohibits organic waste from going to landfill outright, which indirectly pushes municipalities and businesses toward diverting and separating organic waste for anaerobic digestion or composting.
But, a 2023 IEA Bioenergy Task 36 policy review is blunt that South Africa “requires a focused and detailed waste-to-energy policy” and still lacks the dedicated tariffs or tax incentives that countries like Sweden or Germany use.
Egypt has instituted a feed-in tariff for electricity generated from municipal solid waste and landfill biogas, and from sewage sludge where local governorates supply the waste feedstock at no cost to the project. This incentivises waste-to energy plants directly rather than source separation by households. Nothing in the framework ties the tariff to separated or pre-sorted waste streams.
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Sustainable waste management
Kenya has the Sustainable Waste Management Act (2022) and its Extended Producer Responsibility Regulations (gazetted November 2024) requiring producers to design for recyclability, adopt take-back and deposit-refund schemes, and empower the Cabinet Secretary to “recommend incentives to promote sustainable waste management.”
But the regulations, specific financial incentives and national targets are “yet to be defined.”
Ethiopia’s Reppie waste-to-energy plant in Addis Ababa is the continent’s first large-scale waste-to-energy project and a cautionary tale. The mass-burn incinerator doesn’t depend on source separation and is often criticised as the wrong approach for the continent. The argument being that because African municipal waste is mostly organic, composting and source-separation investment would be cheaper and more effective than incineration infrastructure.
- Rwanda‘s plastic bag ban and waste bylaws;
- Nigeria and Guinea’s single-use plastic bans; and
- Namibia’s planned EPR framework
all aim their waste policy momentum at plastics and e-waste producer responsibility rather than separation at source for energy recovery specifically.
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Clean cooking and bio-energy
Organic waste can be bio-digested to produce methane-rich gas and compost but one of the fastest growing bio-energy sub-sectors for policy development in Africa right now is clean cooking.
The IEA points out that more than 60 new clean cooking policies were introduced in 2025, mostly in Africa where three-quarters of the human population without access live.
According to the IEA’s State of Energy Policy 2026 report, many countries updated or introduced new clean cooking targets in 2025.
- In 2025 Kenya reduced its VAT on denatured bioethanol to zero;
- Nigeria’s National Clean Cooking Policy exempts LPG and biogas, along with related equipment such as conversion kits, biogas digesters, compressors and clean cooking accessories from VAT;
- Uganda removed VAT from biomass pellets and bioethanol and ethanol stove components; and
- Tanzania has announced plans to lower taxes and levies on clean cooking appliances and energy-efficient stoves.ESI
Find the Sustainable Energy Brief No 3: Waste to Energy Projects
Find the IEA’s State of Energy Policies 2026
