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The industry’s future is looking greener every day. By Ed Ritchie After a decade and more of uncertain economics and opposition from environmentalists, the waste-to-energy (WTE) industry is seeing powerful signs of a full-scale turnaround. The good news is coming from plant expansions, technology innovations, state and federal mandates, upturns in the value of recoverable commodities, downturns in landfill options, and the undisputable fact that “combustion” is no longer a dirty word. Although it looks as if a comeback is in the works, the industry still has a tough game ahead, and much of it will be played in California. Success in the Golden State means surviving proof of technology trials, scare tactics from environmental activists, and risk aversive financial markets. It may sound daunting, but in Los Angeles, a city with costly municipal waste problems typical of California (and other major cities), WTE won the vote as the best solution. The vote literally came in February of 2006, when the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed councilman Greig Smith’s RENEW LA policy. RENEW LA stands for Recovering Energy, Natural Resources and Economic Benefit from Waste for Los Angeles, and is a resource management blueprint to guide the city for the next 20 years. The plan depends upon WTE to shift Los Angeles out of trucking municipal solid waste to landfills, and in to conversion technologies that will create green electricity, alternative fuel sources and manufacturing feedstocks. “The city had 10 landfills 25 years ago, and now we’re down to one,” Smith explains. “But you also have to look at the dollar amount associated with long distance land filling.” Cost estimates show better returns with WTE, and a substantial contribution to the city’s renewable energy targets. “The city is expecting to generate 30 MW from WTE, about one-third of the green energy production quota for the year 2010,” he says. The situation in Los Angeles is a good example of a major trend, according to Ted Michaels, president of the Integrated Waste Services Association (IWSA). “There’s a host of factors changing the industry,” notes Michaels. “The call for nonfossil and renewable resources is growing, and then there’s the economics of high natural-gas prices driving up the cost of producing electricity.” Michaels also cites rising costs for landfills and the fuel needed to transport municipal waste to distant regional or “super landfills.” The changing economics have resulted in plant expansions in Fort Myers, FL, where Lee County’s 1,089-metric-ton-per-day solid waste resource recovery facility is adding a 578-ton-per-day expansion unit. Other states considering WTE facility expansions include Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Minnesota. New projects are receiving serious consideration in Maryland, Hawaii, and California. Communities wouldn’t approve of those expansions if WTE was still seen as the polluting incineration of trash and the enemy of recycling. Today the industry touts an impressive record in reducing emissions in the US and points to Europe’s success as further proof that WTE is better for the environment than land filling. “We’ve spent about 30% of our capital and operating costs on air-pollution control management,” says Patrick F. Mahoney, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of Energy Answers Corp. in Albany, NY. “Landfills spent nothing. So it’s not a balanced playing field, because the gases emitted from landfills are hundreds of times worse than what comes out of a working recovery facility.” While competition from unregulated landfills helped wither the number of facilities in the US to a low point of 88, Europe’s anti-landfill regulations pushed WTE growth to more than 300, with many more under development. European emission standards were stricter than those of the US, but the EPA has caught up, and such WTE operators as Covanta, Wheelabrator, and Energy Answers invested heavily—approximately $1 billion on scrubbers, carbon injection, noncatalytic reduction, filters, and electrostatic precipitators—to meet tough EPA standards for dioxins and other pollutants. The results were a 99% decrease in dioxin emissions so that WTEs emit less than a half of 1%, while mercury emissions declined by more than 95%. Recycling also contributed to the WTE turnaround. In October 2006, the EPA announced that the US had recycled 32% of its waste in 2005, and that included composting. By comparison, an IWSA 2002 survey showed that 57% of the responding WTE communities already had recycling rates greater than the national average of 28%. Onsite WTE recycling of ferrous and nonferrous metals recovery, ash reuse and other materials recovery occurred at 82% of US facilities and all WTE plants were linked to some form of offsite recycling programs. Cities are finding that there can be quite a bit of money in metals recovery. For example, Energy Answers recovered $1,000 per day of US coins from its $400 million, 3,000-tons-per-day SEMASS Resource Recovery Project, a WTE system developed for dry and wet combustion ash management and recovery of valuable materials.
According to Wes Muir, director of corporate communications for Houston, TX–based Waste Management, metals recovery is a hot market for the industry. “Commodity prices have improved dramatically and made it much easier for us to control costs,” says Muir. Waste Management’s Wheelabrator division operates 24 WTE facilities in the US, and Waste Management markets services to help communities find markets for their commodities. There’s another benefit, adds Ted Michaels: “It takes a lot of energy to mine metals. We recycle more than 700,000 tons per year, and that’s enough to construct over half a million new cars. The energy saved and the greenhouse gases that are avoided are substantial.” Greenhouse gas (GHG) and climate change are positive issues for the WTE industry. “The emphasis on climate change gives us a great story to tell, because for every ton of solid waste processed in a waste-to-energy plant saves the garbage from a landfill where methane is created, and that is much more potent than carbon dioxide as far as greenhouse gases are concerned,” notes Michaels. “We produce electricity that avoids burning fossil fuel and the EPA estimates that every ton of trash we burn avoids one ton of carbon dioxide, or about 33 million metric tons per year. That’s a great story and we have been spending a lot of time making sure people are seeing it.” Methane flares at landfills were once a common sight, but the industry is no longer willing to let the energy potential go up in smoke. As one of the largest landfill operators in the US, Waste Energy sees significant profit opportunities from methane. The company created a dedicated renewable energy group charged with designing, building and marketing landfill gas (LFG) electricity. According to Wes Muir, Waste Energy’s Wheelabrator division plans nine new LFG energy facility projects for 2008. “We’re capturing methane and for the most part using it for electricity. These are self-financed,” Muir notes. “It’s a huge market with 1,200 landfills in the US, and we have about 25% of those, so we’re looking to bring this technology to our sites as well as others.” Many landfills are operated by smaller companies and municipalities that don’t have the economic power of Waste Management, but they are the focus of attention from the EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP). One example of the program is a 1-MW LFG energy project for the Southeastern Chester County Refuse Authority (SECCRA) in Pennsylvania. The facility officially launched in January 2007, and includes a gas-collection system, an LFG-powered generator, a power line connection to the grid, and an electronic monitoring system. SECCRA invested $2.3 million in the facility, including a $500,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority. Revenue from electricity and renewable energy tax credits are expected to return the site’s investment in about seven years. Electricity generation makes up about two-thirds of current projects in the United States. Landfills use it onsite or sell it to the grid. Most of the large landfills use internal combustion (reciprocating) engines or turbines, while microturbines find a better fit at smaller landfills and in niche applications. Some proof of technology currently under development involves Stirling engines, organic Rankine cycle engines, and fuel cells. Landfill gas also has opportunities for offsite usage as evidenced with the Iris Glen Landfill in Johnson City, TN. The LMOP worked with Energy Systems Group (ESG), Johnson City, and LMOP industry partner Waste Management to develop a project that captures and cleans LFG at the rate of 1,500 standard cubic feet per minute. A 4-mile pipeline transports the LFG to the James A. Quillen VA Medical Center, Mountain Home, TN, where it fuels an engine generating electricity, plus steam and hot water from boilers. Compared to natural gas, LFG is significantly lower in thermal concentration and higher in impurities. That was a problem for the medical center’s original systems that were designed to run on natural gas. But the problem was solved when LMOP industry partner Air Liquide-Medal developed a membrane filtration system to remove impurities and raise the LFG to roughly 820 Btu per standard cubic foot, about 90% of the standard energy content of pipeline-quality gas. All told, the project supplies a one-for-one replacement of natural gas with no burner modifications, and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in retrofit costs. The EPA estimates that about one-third of current LFG projects are “direct-use,” where the LFG offsets a fuel such as natural gas, coal, or fuel oil. The LFG heats boilers, dryers, kilns, greenhouses, and other thermal applications. It can also be used directly to evaporate leachate. Some industry applications include auto manufacturing, chemical production, food processing, pharmaceutical, cement and brick manufacturing, wastewater treatment, consumer electronics and products, paper and steel production, prisons, and hospitals. Cogeneration (combined heat and power, or CHP) projects using LFG generate electricity and thermal energy, typically steam or hot water. A BMW automotive manufacturing plant near Greer, SC, uses LFG to fuel four gas turbine cogeneration units (4.8-MW capacity) and recovers 72,000 Btus per hour of hot water. The turbines fulfill about 25% of the plant’s electrical needs and nearly all of its thermal needs. The gas travels from Palmetto Landfill via a 9.5-mile pipeline. Production of alternate fuels from LFG is an emerging area. Landfill gas has been successfully delivered to the natural-gas pipeline system as both a high-Btu and medium-Btu fuel. Landfill gas has also been converted to vehicle fuel in the form of compressed natural gas (CNG), with a number of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and methanol production projects in the planning stages. “Syngas” is another type of WTE-based fuel that’s growing in popularity. AlterNrg, headquartered in Calgary, AB, uses a proprietary plasma-based gasification technology developed by its subsidiary Westinghouse Plasma Corp. (WPC) for converting various feedstocks such as coal, petroleum coke, municipal solid waste, biomass, or bitumen into commercial syngas. Commercial applications of the WPC plasma gasification have been in operation since 2002. For example, Japan’s Hitachi Metals Ltd. uses the technology in two factories that transform MSW, auto shredder residue (ASR), and sewage sludge into steam and electricity. The largest of the two, in Utashinai, Japan, can process 200–280 tons per day of MSW, or a combination of MSW and ASR at a rate of 165 to 190 tons per day. The Utashinai facility uses 4 MW internally and exports 3.9 MW of net electricity to the grid. According to Kevin Willerton, vice president of business development, Alter Nrg has two projects under construction in India and five publicly announced WTE projects in the US. “We’ve seen an explosion of interest in our technology within the US, and we have another dozen with developers that have projects working in other parts of the world,” he says. In the US the most visible project using Alter Nrg’s WPC process is a WTE facility in St. Lucie County, FL. The facility was approved by the county in April 2007 and targeted for completion by the second quarter of 2010. It will begin by converting 1,000 tons of garbage per day, and eventually reach 3,000 tons. To start, it will generate will enough electricity to power more than 25,000 homes. “Our technology is different from typical waste to energy technologies of the past that used a mass burn technology,” notes Willerton. “After we gasify the garbage it’s a lot easier to clean up and get the syngas to a place where you can burn it in our equipment. It’s a much cleaner process than the past methods.” Renewable Portfolio Standards Spur LFG Growth
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a voluntary, legally binding, multisector market for reducing and trading GHG credits (similar to a stock exchange), is an industry partner of the LMOP. The Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority in Pennsylvania was the first public environmental services organization in the US to join the CCX, and since October 2006 it has earned $140,000 from credits. The EPA says that CCX landfill methane offsets are issued on the basis of all methane collected and destroyed net of carbon dioxide released upon combustion, at a rate of 18.25 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each metric ton of methane combusted. Emission offsets are sold at market prices on the CCX trading platform. Prices typically range from $1 to $5 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. Average historic daily trading volume is roughly 21,000 metric tons. Total trading volume on CCX as of August 2006 exceeded 12 million metric tons. An Opportunity in the Golden State The impact on WTE energy will be more than significant, according to California Biomass Collaborative director Bryan Jenkins, a UC Davis professor of biological and agricultural engineering, and the director of the UC Davis Bioenergy Research Group. “Between 50% to 60% of municipal solid waste is biogenic and biomass, so it constitutes one of the major sources of biomass, and in California it’s the major source,” Jenkins explains. Biomass will also come from forests and agriculture, but the urban sector constitutes the biggest concentrated source of biomass that the collaborative considers available and used in a sustainable manner. The first critical phase is to research technologies that can fulfill the state’s targets. “We need basic research and a substantial effort in applied and fundamental research,” says Jenkins. “California and other states have recognized that we need the basic research that gives us the techniques and understanding of how we can convert biomass material to energy of various types. We also need demonstrations to understand the ramifications of these activities in the way of life cycle, environmental, and economic assessments, and good demonstrations. We really can’t understand how a lot of these systems will behave at commercial scales until we have something that looks like a commercial scale, and we don't have things like now.” Technologies for converting cellulosic materials to liquid fuels include, pyrolysis and gasification. These are low-oxygen, high-temperature thermal processes that break down materials containing carbon. Pyrolysis produces char (or ash) and pyrolysis oil and synthetic gas (syngas). Gasification breaks down residual hydrocarbons into a syngas. Fermentation techniques and chemical techniques can convert waste to syngas or liquid gases of various types that function very much like gasoline and diesel. On February 28, 2007, the US Department of Energy announced that six companies had qualified for up to $385 million in federal funding to help bring cellulosic ethanol to market and help revolutionize the industry. The biorefineries are expected to contribute more than 130 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year to President Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012 and, along with increased automobile fuel efficiency, reduce America’s gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years. Combined with industry cost-sharing, more than $1.2 billion will be invested in these six biorefineries. Along with the $385 million, the DOE just released a solicitation for another $200 million for small-scale refineries. Jenkins believes the results will help determine the future designs of WTE plants. “There is an economy of scale associated with these projects just as there is with petroleum refining and power generation. The question is, how are we going to match the financing and economics associated with capital equipment to the resource?” As one of the recipients of the DOE grants, BlueFire Ethanol’s president Arnold Klann hopes to answer many of the economic questions. The Irvine, CA–based company will locate its plant at the El Sobrante Landfill in Corona (owned by Waste Management). Production targets are for 19 million gallons of ethanol a year. Feedstock will be 700 tons per day of sorted green waste and wood waste from landfills. The DOE believes the project will offer a better understanding of a new biological fermentation process not using enzymes. BlueFire also was one of three companies selected to receive $1 million in funding from the California Energy Commission (CEC). According to Klann, new WTE technologies won’t succeed without state and federal funding. “From a financial standpoint people are still asking how can they make money, but for the first couple of plants you can’t, because there are too many risks with the technology,” notes Klann. “The problem is that everybody wants to be first to finance the second project, but nobody wants to finance the first project.” Klann adds that his technology has already been proved in Japan and that BlueFire passed California emission standards when the company applied for permits for an earlier project that was halted due to funding problems. The process uses concentrated acid hydrolysis. Klann notes that sulfuric acid is probably one the most widely used chemicals behind water, and the company reuses and recycles as much as possible. The California Energy Commission found that the process had no significant impact to the environment. Nonetheless, environmental activists are ready to object to BlueFire’s project, says Susan Brown, senior policy analyst for the California Energy Commission. Brown is responsible for developing and recommending legislative policy and climate change policy, plus the coordination of a state level Bioenergy Interagency Working Group. “The activists have attended our meetings and are extremely vocal because they are closer to the action here. We have environmental representation on all of policies we develop.” No matter the technology, WTE faces stiff opposition from environmental activists that are threatened by progress in the industry and in California. According to two of many such organizations, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, and Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, traditional WTE technologies and new developments such as pyrolysis, gasification, plasma arc, and catalytic cracking are nothing more than polluting “incinerators in disguise.” Moreover, they threaten to devastate recycling, pollution prevention and renewable energy programs. The groups consider California a critical battleground, and claim success in stopping a number of projects in the state, including Chowchilla, where they defeated a proposal for a medical waste treatment facility using pyrolysis. In the City of Alameda, a solid waste treatment facility using gasification met with a similar fate. Efforts to develop a catalytic cracking facility in the San Joaquin Valley ran aground when activists challenged permits based upon clean emission claims from Plastic Energy, LLC.
But the news isn’t all bad from the environmental community. Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore cited WTE as an important means to offset greenhouse gas emissions and minimize waste in an op-ed piece for the Toronto Star. And in February 2007 Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed into law an RPS that requires 25% of the state’s electricity to be produced by renewable resources—including waste-to-energy—by 2025. The law received broad support from various environmental group. Another concern from environmental groups involves the locations of WTE facilities. Groups often claim that low-income or minority communities are unfairly burdened when plant sites are chosen. California may become the first city to establish an innovative solution to the justice issue if Greg Smith’s RENEW LA plan stays on track. Smith advocates locating seven WTE facilities throughout Los Angeles so no particular area is favored. “Unlike landfills or older facilities these won’t have any smokestack issues, smells or other problems associated with landfills,” Smith explains. Moreover, keeping the truck traffic local to collection points is estimated as a net positive impact on the order of 300,000 tons per year less in emissions. Currently, the city’s Sunshine Landfill sees approximately 1000 truck visits per day. Communities also will benefit from something that gets the attention of any politician’s re-election committee—jobs. “We call them green-collar jobs,” says Smith. “Look at a landfill and you see about a half dozen people driving bulldozers or working rakes. Conversion facilities employ one or two dozen people running computers and systems in much better jobs.” With attractive jobs, state, and federal funding, President Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012, and the newfound ability to provide green energy at a competitive price, WTE has the best environment since the industry began in the 1980s. However, the future depends on success as both a technical solution and an acceptable political/environmental solution for major cities like Los Angeles. Bryan Jenkins believes that succeeding in Los Angeles and California is possible, and it will fuel the industry’s growth throughout the US. “We have a lot of opportunities, but a number of barriers, that are institutional and technical as well as financial,” says Jenkins. “But they are not intractable or insurmountable if we really want to sit down as a state and do this.” Ed Ritchie specializes in energy, transportation, and communication technologies. MSW - May/June 2008
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