By Chris Warren
<p><span class="cap">P</span>aul Pabor says he recalls precisely when the University of New Hampshire decided to become the first institution of higher education in the country to get the bulk of its energy from a landfill. Pabor, who is vice president of renewable energy for <b><a href="http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/wm.html" target="_blank">Waste Management Inc.</a></b> (WM), says that officials from the school”s Durham campus approached Waste Management in 2005. “The university people were really looking for ways to be more sustainable and use renewable energy,” he explains.</p>
<p>The result: In 2008, UNH agreed to a partnership with Waste Management that has the company supplying the school with enough landfill gas to meet up to 85 percent of its energy needs — a project, the company says, that required the construction of a nearly 13-mile pipeline between a Waste Management-owned landfill in Rochester, N.H., and the campus. According to the university, the benefits of the partnership are both environmental and economic. In fact, the school expects that the program will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to approximately 67 percent below 2005 levels and 57 percent below 1990 levels. It is also expected to stabilize its annual energy costs, which, the school says, have grown at an annual rate of almost 19 percent during the past five years.</p>
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<a href="convertingwastetoenergy" target="_self" class="actionlink">Key Steps of Waste-to-Energy Conversion</a><br>
<a href="trashtrack" target="_self" class="actionlink">Tracking Trash</a>
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<p>According to Pabor, Waste Management is building between eight and 10 landfill gas facilities a year across North America, adding to the 100-plus the company already owns and operates. Whether converting landfill gas or garbage to energy, Pabor says, Waste Management has a simple purpose: “Our goal as a company is to pull as much energy out of the waste as we can, regardless of how we do it.”</p>
<p>One of the biggest environmental benefits of converting waste to energy is in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, according to companies in that sector. Paul Gilman, chief sustainability officer of <b><a href="http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/cva.html" target="_blank">Covanta Holding Corp.</a></b> (CVA), a global developer, owner and operator of infrastructure for the generation of energy from waste, points out that landfills are among the worst offenders when it comes to the production of greenhouse gases. “We can say that for every ton of municipal waste we process, a community is avoiding a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent,” he notes. By his estimate, the 44 energy-from-waste facilities Covanta operates displace around 5 million tons of coal that otherwise would have been burned to create electricity last year, equaling a total carbon offset of more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide. The company says that its total carbon offset has exceeded 250 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions from 1986 through 2008.</p>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
America’s 87 waste-to-energy facilities process about 12 percent of the total waste stream in the country.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<p>In the U.S. and around the world, a host of factors — environmental, economic and government policy — have coalesced to make waste-to-energy generation an increasingly appealing option for power supply and waste management, say waste-management companies. Of the 87 waste-to-energy facilities in the U.S., says Jack Ristau, director of business development of Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Waste Management, Wheelabrator operates 16. Veolia Environmental Services, a division of Paris-based <b><a href="http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/ve.html" target="_blank">Veolia Environnement</a></b> (VE), says it operates two. In total, Ristau says, the 87 facilities in the U.S. process around 90,000 tons of garbage every day, an amount that he says is equal to about 12 percent of the total waste stream in the country. By contrast, Ristau adds, Europe takes about 24 percent of its entire waste stream for use in waste-to-energy facilities. </p>
<PAGEBREAK>
<div class="articleImg leftImg" style="width: 200px"><img src="/statics/Q10_Techno_0948bulb__180x200_TW.jpg" alt="light bulbs" /><p class="credit"> Dan Saelinger</p><div class="caption"><b>482 kilowatt hours of energy can be made from an average person’s yearly waste.</b> </div></div>
<h2>A Global Perspective</h2>
<p>With operations in more than 30 countries, Veolia says it has a somewhat different viewpoint from companies that focus primarily on turning waste into energy in the U.S. Veolia, which says it operates more than 100 waste-to-energy plants as well as 168 landfills around the world, believes that in addition to the continuous increase in energy costs, the global drivers of the waste-to-energy business include the advent of new technologies to boost plant efficiency and, particularly in Europe, regulations around landfill diversion.</p>
<p>From Veolia’s perspective, growth in the waste-to-energy business internationally depends partly on the process, which the company breaks down into three categories: recovery of energy produced in incineration plants, landfill gas production and so-called refuse-derived fuel, or RDF. The company explains that RDF involves the production of a “calibrated” combustible in the form of pellets or fluff that can be used in heaters on industrial sites. “RDF is a very promising way of treating waste with a high energy-recovery performance,” explains Denis Gasquet, CEO of Veolia Environmental Services and COO of Veolia Environnement. The company says landfill gas has high potential around the world. Waste-to-energy plants, according to Veolia, have varying prospects based on location, with France and Germany already the home to so many that few new projects are emerging. The potential for waste-to-energy is very high in the U.K., the company says, thanks to political will for landfill diversion. Veolia also says that the RDF approach is already well developed in Germany and Scandinavia and is quickly developing in Italy.</p>
<p>But the European Union is now requiring member countries to achieve a 65 percent reduction in the landfilling of biodegradable municipal solid waste, and Covanta”s Gilman says that regulations like this account for the company”s expectation that more demand will emanate from Europe. He says Covanta has made significant progress in developing a 600,000-ton facility in Dublin and is pursuing a number of other competitive bids on the Continent. In China, meanwhile, the government is intent on reducing the use of landfills. According to Covanta, China has said that by 2030 it wants to see 30 percent of the country”s waste turned into energy. Covanta says it is actively pursuing joint ventures and projects in China, including one already under construction in Chengdu in Sichuan Province. </p>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The U.S. EPA says energy
from waste has “less
environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity.”</BLOCKQUOTE>
<p>Still, out of the 1 billion tons of waste that reach landfills worldwide every year, according to Covanta, one-quarter of it — and an equal proportion of waste-to-energy business opportunities — is in America. What”s more, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says energy from waste has “less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity,” and the World Economic Forum and the U.S. Council of Mayors have both endorsed the process. </p>
<p>“We use something nobody wants, household waste, to create something everybody wants, clean renewable energy,” says Covanta President and CEO Anthony J. Orlando. “Our client communities benefit from cost-competitive and sustainable waste disposal, and the environment benefits from less dependence on fossil fuel and fewer landfills.” </p>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<h2>MORE ON TECHNOVATIONS</h2>
<a href="convertingwastetoenergy" target="_self" class="actionlink">Key Steps of Waste-to-Energy Conversion</a><br>
<a href="trashtrack" target="_self" class="actionlink">Tracking Trash</a>
</BLOCKQUOTE><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
340
2010-01-09T17:26:11-06:00
#<User:0x9d260c8>
The world creates mountains of trash. Here’s how those heaps are being converted into clean, renewable energy.
Technovations:<br>From Waste to Watts
0
134
false
Q1 2010
Technovations
2010-01-25T00:00:00-06:00
The world creates mountains of trash. Here”s how those heaps are being converted into clean, renewable energy.
waste management, recycling, compost, energy
wastetowatts
2010-01-24
Learn how heaps of garbage become energy.
339
From Waste to Watts
2010-01-27T16:37:33-06:00
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