In a 2007 memo, EPA compared the industry's emissions performance for major pollutants between 1990 and 2005. The report found a 24 percent decrease in nitrogen oxide, an 88 percent drop in sulfur dioxide and a decrease in dioxins and mercury of 99 percent and 96 percent, respectively, over the time period.
But Covanta's Gilman said the real savings are in reducing landfill methane emissions. For every ton of waste that goes through the facility, he contends, a ton of greenhouse gas emissions is avoided. Two-thirds of the incinerated material is biomass. The remaining one-third is essentially a fossil fuel.
Carbon savings come from the offsetting of methane emissions that would have been released if the ton of waste had gone to a landfill. Methane is 21 percent more potent as a global warmer than carbon dioxide.
Themelis said emissions reductions are probably a little lower than what the company suggests.
Based on these reductions, a study published in the journal Waste Management & Research determined that municipal solid waste constituted a "stabilization wedge" that could mitigate atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Authors said that if global waste was managed as it is in many parts of Europe -- more recycling, use of the waste-to-energy process and the limited use of landfills -- it would reduce greenhouse emissions by 1 billion tonnes per year.
One researcher on the paper was a Covanta employee, however, and not all analyses of waste-to-energy projects have painted such a positive picture.
Emissions improvements questioned
Covanta has applied for main-tier status in New York's RPS, a program to increase the state's renewable energy capacity to 30 percent by 2015. The theory is that energy from waste provides reliable baseload energy and significant greenhouse gas reductions.
New York already classifies "wastes" as renewable resources, but becoming part of the state's renewable portfolio would make Covanta eligible for ratepayer funding. Last Friday, the comment period closed on Covanta's petition.
Laura Haight, senior environmental associate at New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), says that if the petition passes, waste will take incentives away from more sustainable technologies like wind and solar. She also says that presenting the issue as though incineration offsets landfill emissions is the wrong approach.
"In framing this whole debate as incineration versus landfills, they're pushing the needle back 20 years," said Haight. "Twenty years ago, people used to say we need to do more recycling; now we're talking about more burying or burning. No, we need to be doing more recycling."
Haight points out that more energy is saved by reusing materials instead of destroying them. Also, rather than being burned, biomass could be composted and used for energy recovery, she said.
While not taking a direct stance on the petition, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) also presented some concerns. The DEC wrote in its comments that Covanta was denied entry to the RPS in 2004 because in the year 2000, mercury emissions from waste-to-energy facilities in New York were an average of six times higher than coal.
The report also found waste-to-energy facilities "continue to emit most air pollutants at emission rates that are greater than coal-fired power plants on a per megawatt-hour (MWh) basis."
"This is a big issue here in New York," said Haight. "They're seeking to be included as a clean energy source, so we need to push hard on the issue of the emissions. Even though they have improved over the years, that doesn't mean they should be considered clean energy."
Last week, Covanta received the go-ahead to start building a C$250 million plant in Clarington, Ontario, where officials have said they see the project as a sustainable way to manage waste.
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16 Comments
Add CommentWe also want municipal hot water! In Europe, incinerator plants not only generate electricity but they also heat water for urban residents. I recently spent a lot of time in a very comfortable Viennese apartment whose heat came from this plant:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.advantageaustria.org/ie/news/local/Waste-Management-the-Austrian-Way_ASC2009.en.jsp
Come on America, we can do it (too)!
Yes, but the question is do we even want to create a huge waste-burning industry with a large installed capital infrastructure which will then have to be paid for when we're likely to decide in 10 or 15 years that burning it was a dumb idea?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not an easy call.
Question: What do they use to generate the 200F needed to burn this garbage? Electricity? NG? Coal? Regardless of what they use to what degree is it energy positive. Nevertheless this is better than burying the stuff or dumping it at sea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissorry that should have read 2000F not 200F
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe garbage burner simply maintains a 2000F temperature. There may be some auxiliary heating for startup or whatever, but once it is going the temperature is just maintained by having a hot enough fire. The material needs to be reduced to a specific size, dried, etc probably. The actual burning process isn't that much different than for something like coal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBurning is OK, only if the recyclable trash is removed first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPutting trash in the landfill lets toxic wastes get into the soil, unwanted gases in the air, (like methane, that explodes underground when it is not burned from pipes in the ground) and makes large areas of land for the most part, useless for years.
To reduce the trash, packaging, marketing, and advertising needs to stop the "Foolish Grandiose" product sell.
If Eco-buyers left these "products...unsold", they would get the message.
Incineration technology has clearly greatly improved over the last 25 years. Garbage pyrolysis would avoid the release of the CO2 liberated by incineration, whilst producing hydrogen for electricity generation and the remaining biochar could be used in agriculture. When CO2 reaches 40$ per ton pyrolysis will become a major world-wide industry operating at local scale and producing massive employment funded by carbon sequestration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis recovery of energy from the waste stream is a great idea. The separation of heavy metals like mercury, cadmiuim etc. is problematic, and probably the hardest environmental problem to solve in this process. One of the others has been the production of dioxins from the burning of plastics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have been proposals to use pyrolosis, (the combustion of materials in an oxygen inhibited environment at very high temperature) that allows the breakdown of plastics to their elemental level, and subsequent recover of chlorine and other toxic substances to avoid this problem. The whole process hinges upon the careful maintenance and operation of the multitude of sensors that monitor emissions of the variety of controlled elements, and the failsafe programs that control the process.
I worked in a plant where this process was proposed. The economics of this proposal hinged upon a government subsidy for the disposal of tires However there was not an adequate supply of waste tires to make it feasible, so the plant was never built. However the large metropolitan areas now have to spend so much on transporting waste to landfills that it likely is feasible now.
Interesting. That makes sense, do a complete reduction. I wonder though, how much energy output can you get that way? It is clearly going to be quite a bit less than combustion. Will it be net energy-positive or as eco-Steve seems to be saying would it rely on a high carbon offset price to be feasible overall?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is certainly an appealing concept as simple burning seems in some sense wasteful.
The biggest problem I see is the business model itself. If one wants to save money/energy, the first thing you do is reduce wastefulness. So this is a business built on a resource base which should shrink, not grow. doesn't sound like something I would want to invest in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMethane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, perhaps as much as 70 times more potent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe title of the article is misleading. What progress? No plants have been built since l995. One plant is approved for Palm Beach, FL and one for the Green Bay area. Yet there are hundreds of proposals out there and most are going no where. Some have been defeated already.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe environmental impact information in the article is misleading. There is no accounting for the embodied energy in the materials that are being destroyed. Recycling these materials---organic matter, paper, plastic, etc.---saves more energy than is produced in the incineration/gasification plants. And, recycling and composting cost much less and create jobs. Latest estimate about 1.5 million jobs in recycling and composting and reuse industries.
Need a sharper analysis than what has been presented.
Neil Seldman
Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Washington, DC
Professor Nickolas Themelis from the Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council at Columbia University responds to Laura Haight's (NYPIRG) critique of waste to energy here http://blog.wtert.org/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, the NRDC's report on recycling was very good and informative. But, hope you're also aware of the fact that all waste cannot be recycled! Its sometimes not economically feasible, and sometimes technically. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle are the priorities, but what after that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust like reducing will not vanish the entire waste stream, reuse and recycle will not either. Once we recover as much material as possible by recycling, we should recover energy from the rest of it instead of landfilling it!
US is doing dismally compared to other developed countries! Like you mentioned, there were not many new WTE facilities, neither were there any good recycling programs. California after all the recycling they do, still landfill about 1 ton per person every day. Netherlands and Germany achieved almost zero waste by including WTE in the waste treatment methodology and not by excluding it like California!
Right, the most sensible way to tackle waste is reduce generation. Your investment decision makes good sense as long as you don't take the increasing population into account.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWaste generation = waste generated by person multiplied by the population.
Even though the waste generation per person might decrease, the total waste generated might not!!
Burning of resources humanity has put in so much effort to generate is definitely wasteful. Burying resources is more wasteful. Please have a look at this link for a complete description of the waste management hierarchy which can guide a decision maker in choosing the right technology. http://swmindia.blogspot.com/2012/03/anaerobic-digestion-waste-to-energy-and.html
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