For the first time in a decade, new waste-to-energy capacity is being added in the US. Waste-to-energy may well be getting a homecoming here, as renewable energy legislation, increasing commitment to reduce emissions, and increasing recognition of its greenhouse gas benefits are beginning to turn the scales for the technology.
by Ted Michaels
Waste-to-energy (WTE) in the United States has had its ups and downs over the past two decades and it appears that the tide is about to turn once more. With high energy prices and an increasing demand for disposal capacity, communities are once again turning to WTE to meet their disposal needs while producing energy with minimal environmental impact.
The first new WTE capacity in a decade is under construction in Fort Myers, Florida. The existing 1089-metric-tonne-per-day Lee County Solid Waste Resource Recovery Facility has broken ground on a 578 tonne-per-day expansion unit. Facilities in Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Minnesota and other locations are also considering expanding existing installed capacity. In addition, new projects, or greenfield facilities, are actively being considered in Maryland, Hawaii, California and elsewhere. After focusing for the past 10 years on superior operations rather than growth, these opportunities are the beginning of a new chapter for WTE in the United States. This article discusses the factors that have put WTE in the United States on the verge of a renaissance.
WTE is renewable energy
There perhaps has never been a more resounding need for renewable energy in the United States than there is today. The call for renewable energy has been heard loud and clear as a result of the demand for energy independence and the growing environmental concerns associated with fossil-fuel use. Most importantly, the rising cost of energy in the United States has led both political parties to embrace renewable energy as a contributing solution to the current problem.
On 8 August 2005, President Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which recognized waste-to-energy as renewable in two important ways: by its inclusion in the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) and in the renewable purchasing requirements for federal agencies.
The new law extended for two years the period in which new WTE projects could qualify for the Section 45 renewable energy PTC and increased the payout to eligible projects from five to ten years. Under the new law, a WTE plant that is placed in service prior to 31 December 2007 will receive a tax credit of 1 US cent/kWh for electricity produced by that plant, for a period of 10 years. The law also provided a key incentive to expand existing facilities by allowing the tax credit to apply to electricity produced by the additional capacity of a new unit or boiler.
In addition, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a requirement for the federal government to purchase 7.5% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2013 and included WTE as a renewable resource that will count toward that requirement. This provides additional financial opportunities for the WTE industry to benefit from its production of renewable energy or through the sales of its renewable energy credits. WTE providers in the past have sold renewable energy credits to US military installations, the United States Coast Guard and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through a competitive bidding process. This new statutory requirement will ensure that the federal government remains an active participant in the renewable energy market and that WTE can participate in that market.
Environmental excellence
The WTE industry in the United States has created growth opportunities through its commitment to emissions reductions that have been documented by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA required municipal waste combustors to comply with Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards by the year 2000. In order to meet the standards, many WTE operators retrofitted their plants with modern air pollution control equipment. This required significant investment of resources, as local governments and the industry spent approximately US$1 billion to bring them into compliance with the new standards. Facilities have relied largely on a combination of scrubbers, carbon injection, selective non-catalytic reduction, and either fabric filters or electrostatic precipitators to meet the strict standards set by the EPA.
All this investment resulted in significant emissions reductions. Proud of its accomplishments, the WTE industry provided the EPA with the most robust database of emissions data that the agency had ever received from any industry. Through analysis of the compliance data, the EPA determined in 2002 that nationwide emissions of dioxin by WTE plants were reduced by more than 99% from 1990 levels. Mercury was reduced by more than 95%. Lead, cadmium, hydrochloric acid, and particulate matter were all reduced by 90% or more. These accomplishments led the EPA to conclude in 2003 that the WTE industry produces electricity with ‘less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity’.
The emissions control upgrades made by the industry were so successful that most plants far exceeded the standards. Far from letting anyone rest on their laurels, the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review and revise the emission standards for waste-to-energy every five years. On 10 May 2006, the EPA published revisions to the MACT standards which tightened the legal limits even further. In many instances, the standards were tightened to reflect the actual superior performance of existing plants.
Because the siting of any energy facility in the US is so difficult, it is tremendously important that WTE plants lead through environmental excellence. While there will always be opponents to constructing any type of facility in any community, compliance with strict standards will lead to growth of waste-to-energy in the US by providing more comfort to the communities in which these facilities are needed. Stellar environmental performance will also overcome the rhetoric and fear relied upon by groups that oppose WTE for purely political reasons with no reliance upon fact.
Combating global warming
Numerous studies have also shown that the use of WTE technology prevents the release of greenhouse gases by reducing the amount of waste that is landfilled and by reducing the amount of electricity that is generated using non-renewable fuels. Since the amount of greenhouse gases avoided far outweighs carbon dioxide emissions, waste-to-energy is a net negative emitter of greenhouse gas. As such, waste-to-energy is a key contributor to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and can play a vital role in a political environment that is increasingly attentive to climate change.
Despite the non-participation of the US in the Kyoto Protocol, changes are occurring in the US on the state, regional and national levels. These could create incentives for WTE, through the demand for energy from non-fossil energy sources that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas releases.
Congress has paid increasing attention to climate change issues and shows no signs of retreating. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have championed the Climate Stewardship Act that would establish a national greenhouse gas cap-and-trade programme for the electricity generation, transportation, industrial and commercial economic sectors in order to reduce releases of greenhouse gases to year 2000 levels by 2010. While this proposal has failed on the Senate floor three times, its sponsors are determined to force Congress to take action on this issue. As further proof that the political landscape is changing, corporate leaders are calling for regulation of carbon dioxide. Jim Rogers, President and CEO of Duke Energy Corporation - one of America’s largest electricity providers - has acknowledged that mandatory carbon dioxide controls are inevitable and that Duke Energy supports mandatory carbon controls in order to reduce the regulatory uncertainty.
Individual states are beginning to take action, which has attracted national attention. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed an agreement with the United Kingdom to share expertise, ideas and business strategies to respond to climate change. In addition, the California legislature has approved a statewide cap-and-trade programme designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to year 1990 levels by 2020. That amounts to a 25% reduction from current levels.
 California’s recent approval of its cap-and-trade programme is one of many incentives by US states on climate change. photo: john decker, office of governor schwarzenegger |
In addition, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being taken by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is a co-operative effort by Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. To address the growing concern about climate change, the RGGI participating states will be developing a regional strategy for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide in the 10 participating states. Central to this initiative is the implementation of a multi-state cap-and-trade programme with a market-based emissions trading system. The proposed programme will require electric power generators in participating states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or purchase greenhouse gas credits to offset their impacts.
Waste-to-energy may benefit from the focus on climate change and greenhouse gases in several important ways. First, the increasing attention on reducing greenhouse gases will increase the scrutiny of fossil-fired generation, and will increase the demand for renewable energy. With the population increasing and waste disposal needs continuing an upward trend, communities will have greater incentives to consider waste-to-energy as an integral component of their waste and energy strategies. Second, avoided greenhouse gas releases attributable to the use of waste-to-energy may be recognized and WTE providers may be assigned credits for those offsets, which can be sold to facilities under a cap-and-trade system. Many believe that the analysis of greenhouse gases using a life-cycle analysis should lead policymakers to conclude that WTE is part of the solution.
Compatibility with recycling
Studies have shown that communities with WTE facilities are likely to have higher recycling rates than the national average. Far from competing with recycling, WTE is part of an integrated approach to solid waste management that includes recycling as a core component.
The average recycling rate for WTE communities across the US is 33%, while the national recycling rate is 28%. The excellent recycling record of communities can be attributed to several factors, including on-site recycling efforts at WTE plants, the importance a community places on recycling as part of a comprehensive solid waste management plan, and the economics of recycling.
In addition, many WTE plants employ metal recovery programmes on-site to remove ferrous metals from the ash. More and more WTE facilities are also beginning to implement non-ferrous metal recovery systems for recycling. These recycling activities have proven to be a lucrative opportunity for WTE. Through processes to recover metals from the ash, and with ferrous metals yielding high prices, many facilities are supplementing their bottom line with income from metals recovery. In 2004, more than 635,000 tonnes of ferrous metal were recovered, and that quantity will increase each year. As the recycling efforts continue to grow at WTE facilities, the competitiveness of WTE in the United States will continue to improve.
New opportunities
The reuse of WTE ash is a largely untapped resource that could have material impacts on the industry. The disposal of ash is one of the largest operation and maintenance costs incurred at a plant. While some applications have been researched and implemented, the largest beneficial reuse of ash is as alternative daily cover at landfills. This reduces the costs of pure landfilling, but still represents a significant expense. If there were a breakthrough in the use of ash which could reduce the cost of ash disposal even further, or down to zero, then the economics of WTE would change drastically.
There are many who believe that ash management is the next frontier in WTE, which makes research into this area extremely important. The WTE Research and Technology Council (WTERT) at Columbia University is actively pursuing research into the beneficial reuse of ash. Partnering with the University Ash Consortium, WTERT has conducted laboratory and field research which holds promise and provides an avenue through which the industry can transform its ash from a liability to an asset.
The economic advantage enjoyed by landfills during the past decade is diminishing due to the combination of today’s high fuel prices and as new landfills are moving further away from population centres. American communities are once again considering WTE as an important component of their waste management strategies. The economic attractiveness of waste-to-energy is bolstered by America’s desire to reduce dependence on foreign oil, increased demand for renewable energy, the demand for environmental excellence, and the increasing public awareness of global warming. The worldwide utilization and acceptance of waste-to-energy complements the track record of the industry in the United States and reinforces the lessons learned domestically.
The Lee County, Florida plant expansion currently underway indicates that WTE in the United States is growing, and all signs indicate that this growth will continue.
Ted Michaels is President of Integrated Waste Services Association, Washington, DC, US.e-mail: tmichaels@wte.org
Where WTE stands in the US
There are 89 waste-to-energy plants operating in the United States, which together dispose of more than 81,000 metric tonnes of waste each day while generating approximately 17 million kWh of electricity per year - enough clean energy to supply electricity to about 2.3 million homes. Roughly one-third of the facilities also export steam for sale, which is used for a variety of industrial purposes and heating and air conditioning (see Figure A).
 Figure A. WTE plants operating in the US. source: integrated waste services association, 2004 |
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