Rome's billion-euro incinerator set to be ready by 2027.

Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri on Monday outlined plans to build a giant new waste-to-energy incinerator to tackle garbage disposal problems in the Italian capital.

The proposed facility, designed to treat 600,000 tons of trash a year, is to be built on a 10-hectare site in an industrial area of Santa Palomba to the south of Rome.

Gualtieri, who first announced the plan in 2022 a few months after his election as mayor, told reporters that the waste-to-energy plant would cost "about €1 billion".

"The goal is to open the actual construction site of the termovalorizzatore in the first quarter of 2025" - Gaultieri said - "and by the summer of 2027 we should have the first treated waste".

The centre-left mayor said the Santa Palomba site was "chosen because it is an industrial area and because it has freight railway connections", assuring that there "will be no trucks on the Via Ardeatina" transporting the rubbish by road.

Gualtieri told reporters that the incinerator is projected to generate enough energy to power 200,000 homes and that it would "pollute less than a busy road".