BIOMASS GARBAGE – BETTER THAN GARBAGE

The politicians and critics who argue the process produces emissions are right; it does. Sustainability begins with composting and recycling. But the numbers describing energy produced and emissions reduced by using biomass energy are impressive. It reduces dependence on dirty coal and it reduces landfill methane emissions.

It sounds good, but turning garbage to energy has downsides, critics say
Kristine Owram, August 19, 2007 (Canadian Press via Yahoo News Canada)

WHO
Toronto city councillor and environmentalist Gord Perks; Paul Connett, retired professor of chemistry, St. Lawrence University/Canton; Garry Spotowski, spokesman, Edmonton waste management; Plasco Energy Group President/CEO Rod Bryden.

The basic idea. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Garbage gasification is heralded as turning landfill waste into clean energy but some contend it is more promise than product and potentially a source of pollution. Proponents say gasification is far cleaner than coal plants and saves severe methane emissions from landfill waste. The numbers back up the proponents.

WHEN
- A full-scale garbage gasification plant is not presently operational.
- Toronto considered and rejected the idea in 2002.

WHERE
- Edmonton plans a plant for 2010.
- Ottawa-based Plasco Energy Group is testing a type of gasification in that city which will begin disposing of 70 tonnes of waste/day in September. (Each tonne of waste powers a home for 2 months.)

WHY
- Garbage gasification heats solid waste anaerobically (w/o oxygen) into a gas and burns the gas to generate electricity for the grid. Critics say it is simply incineration. Byproducts: ash and greenhouse gases (GHGs) including what some call “toxic nano particles” which are associated with respiratory and other pathologies.
- Critics contend composting and recycling are far preferable and can address as much as 60% of landfill. Edmonton plans to dispose of 90% of solid waste by adding gasification.
- The Plasco process uses plasma torches for refining, reducing the emission level to “extremely low” and leaving a slag which can be recycled as road and building material.
- Emissions are saved 2 ways: By not burning coal and by not leaving waste to emit methane. Net: 2.5 tonnes of CO2 reduced for every megawatt produced.

Gain energy, reduce emissions, diminish landfill -- is the "perfect" this "good's" only enemy? (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Perks: “It is a law of physics that matter is neither created nor destroyed…We have to remember that incinerators and gasifiers don't destroy the elements that go in, all they do is recombine them in new ways, some of which are more hazardous than what was going in in the first place."
- Connett: "Basically what you're doing is destroying materials that we should be sharing with the future. We buy things today, we destroy them tomorrow. That's a non-sustainable way of living on a finite planet…When you incinerate, you're converting tons and tons of material into trillions of tiny particles, and those tiny particles by definition contain every toxic element that we use in commerce…"
- Spotowski: "We're still left with maybe about 75,000 tonnes a year of material that either can't be recycled or can't be composted, that's what we call residuals…That energy that we can produce, when you net it out against coal-fired electricity generation, for example, it reduces greenhouse gases by about 150,000 tonnes a year. It's the equivalent of removing 37,000 cars from Edmonton's streets."
- Perks: "The question they're asking is, how can we make this garbage that we've created go away? And there's no answer to that question - you can't… The right question is, how do we not create this garbage? And until we start asking the right question, we'll keep getting the wrong answer."