Bishkek – September 20, 2026 -- Central Asia's first waste-to-energy incineration plant has begun cutting Bishkek's household waste stream by 1,000 tons a day, supplying 146 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually to the Kyrgyz grid and reducing carbon emissions by up to 100,000 tons a year.
Plant ends five decades of landfill overflow around Kyrgyzstan's capital
For decades Bishkek relied on a single municipal landfill that was expanded six times as the population grew, leaving residents to contend with accumulating garbage, odors and dust. The China-Kyrgyzstan waste treatment and power generation project, which began commercial operations at the end of 2025, was developed to address the deficit. The facility currently processes 1,000 tons of household waste daily against an overall planned capacity of 3,000 tons.
Hunan Junxin adapted Chinese incineration technology to Kyrgyz climate and geology
The project was invested in, built and is operated by China's Hunan Junxin Environmental Protection Co., Ltd. Deputy general manager Song Qiming said the company did not replicate its domestic technical route but redesigned equipment and process parameters around local waste composition, calorific value and climate. Construction crews faced site temperatures as low as -20 C, frozen-ground periods and collapsible loess soil, while transporting heavy equipment across the Tianshan Mountains complicated cross-border logistics. Builders erected heated, insulated shelters to keep concrete work running through winter and set up a dedicated coordination mechanism for equipment, vehicles and customs clearance.
Grab cranes feed 1,000 C furnaces that convert refuse into grid power
Inside the plant, a grab crane lifts roughly 5 tons of household waste at a time from a refuse pit into an incinerator running at about 1,000 C. Combustion generates steam that drives a turbine, converting waste directly into electricity fed into the national grid. The facility applies strict flue-gas emission standards and holds regular public open days to let residents inspect the treatment process firsthand.
Local hires retrain from adjacent fields as Kyrgyzstan lacks dedicated waste-tech programs
Kyrgyz universities offer no dedicated waste-to-energy curriculum, forcing the company to recruit graduates from automation, machinery, electrical engineering, water treatment and thermal energy and retrain them on-site. Medetbekova Kumushai Tinchitikovna, 23, a biology graduate with no prior chemical-lab experience, now works as a chemical analyst testing water quality and chemical-agent indicators critical to boiler and flue-gas system stability. Akylbekov Aktan Bektashovich, 25, monitors waste feeding, incineration, flue-gas purification and power generation as a centralized control operator, describing the technology as entirely new to the country before the plant's launch.
Xinjiang-trained engineer built bilingual training materials to transfer technical know-how
Palati Nurjan, head of the plant's chemical analysis team and a China University of Petroleum graduate previously employed at a waste-incineration project in China, prepared bilingual Chinese-Kyrgyz training materials covering laboratory safety, water-quality testing and chemical analysis. He trains local staff through direct demonstration followed by supervised practice, with no shortcuts in the certification process.