Rising electricity costs and a growing interest in alternative sources of energy sparked the re-emergence of the waste-to-energy (WTE) industry a couple years ago, after the industry had endured more than a decade of stagnation. Since then, oil prices have spiked, raising the cost of fuel for trucks hauling waste to landfills, and landfill tipping fees have increased, providing more momentum for WTE's resurgence.

Plant expansions and new projects are springing up across the country. “New projects are underway, and we have responded to requests for proposals from Harford County, Md.; Los Angeles; and Palm Beach County, Fla.,” says Frank Ferraro, vice president of public affairs for Wheelabrator Technologies, Inc., Houston-based Waste Management's WTE subsidiary. Wheelabrator owns or operates 16 WTE facilities across the United States.

In fact, Wheelabrator is hoping to gain approval from Frederick County, Md., for what would become the first new WTE plant built in the country in more than 10 years. The facility would accept 1,500 tons per day (TPD) of waste and generate 55 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 60,000 homes.

Fairfield, N.J.-based Covanta Energy, which owns or operates 38 WTE facilities around the world, is also expanding existing WTE plants and preparing to start new projects. “We are currently finishing the expansion of the Hillsborough County, Fla., facility, adding a 600 TPD capacity expansion to the existing county-owned 1,200 TPD facility,” says Seth Myones, president of Covanta Americas.

Covanta also recently received preferred vendor status in Durham-York, Canada, for a new WTE project, and the firm's international arm plans to break ground this summer on a 1,700 metric TPD project in Dublin, Ireland.

Both Wheelabrator and Covanta are encouraged by the Obama administration's push for energy independence. “We see this as a good thing for waste-to-energy,” Ferraro says. “Waste-to-energy helps solve two challenges: energy independence and waste reduction.”

The Clean Energy Bill

Meanwhile, the WTE industry is closely following the debate on the federal American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The act would establish a national renewable portfolio standard mandating that utilities must get 25 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources. However, the original draft didn't define WTE as a renewable source of energy.

Furthermore, as part of a federal cap-and-trade system, the original draft bill would also have placed a limit on WTE facilities' greenhouse gas emissions and would have required the facilities to purchase credits to offset any emissions exceeding the cap.

On behalf of ERC members, Michaels authored a response to the draft legislation. Addressed to U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, the authors of the bill, the letter urged Congress to exempt WTE facilities from the bill's cap-and-trade mandate, citing the results of a life cycle analysis of the environmental and energy impacts of WTE.

According to that analysis, generating electricity with WTE avoids the carbon dioxide emissions produced by fossil fuel-based electrical generators. WTE combustion also eliminates methane emissions the burned waste would produce if landfilled. Finally, WTE combustion makes it possible to recover and recycle ferrous and nonferrous metals from municipal solid waste, which is more energy efficient than processing raw materials, the analysis says.