Waste-to-Energy reduces landfilling, increases recycling, powers society and avoids blackouts
After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.
Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, America’s largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.
Hochul, other state Democrats and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments – and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and State power demands.
In exchange, the Trump Administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year … and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.
New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.
They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.
But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.
It’s a kill switch, reflecting the state’s determination to impose “climate leadership” and “protect communities” from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.
It’s also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesn’t just import electricity; it also exports garbage.
New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina! NY State exports 30% of its garbage.
The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial and other garbage that doesn’t go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until it’s totally combusted to ash.
The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Since opening in 1990, the plant’s trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.
Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.
Unsold ash is landfilled but, by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.
Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be “recycled” this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.
However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances and other larger refuse should go to special “white goods” and metal recycling centers.
Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized, before being landfilled or used in construction materials.
Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated and used to cool the facility and equipment.
Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:
* Philadelphia, PA – 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE;
* Chicago, IL – 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected);
* Houston, TX – 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility;
* Phoenix, AZ – 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility;
* Los Angeles, CA – 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.
New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. They’re also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighbors’ backyards.
These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.
They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.
From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.
Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality and these benefits when reconsidering climate and “renewable” energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights.