By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
According to a recent Tweet by TerraCycle the United States Environmental Protection Agency claims that power plants based on waste incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than coal, natural gas or oil-fired power plants.
This claim should not and does not surprise anyone who knows how compromised the EPA is as regards to the industry lobby in the same way as the FDA is compromised by its contacts to Monsanto and the likes.
Where the government is in bed with, or indeed is, the oil and coal industry claims such as this one are hardly surprising and also not that it is the protection agency that makes such claims. It is, after all, but an arm of that very government, and thus has to say what it is being told.
Scandinavian countries have been using closed loop combined heat and power generating plants based on waste incinerators for decades and, apparently, they work well and have very low emissions.
Anything that burns this or that to create heat and power will put out carbon dioxide but we must not just look at CO2 emissions. We must, once again, consider what worried us in the 1970s; air pollution and acid rain and this was solved via scrubbers in the chimneys and other measures.
Air pollution is killing millions each year in the developed world and we won't even want to talk about places such as China and India, do we now.
While I can hear the likes of the Friends of the Earth already singing their mantra again about we should not incinerate waste but recycle more the fact is that, and Sweden who recycles more than most, knows that well, there will, with the best intentions in the world, always remain some waste that cannot be recycled or turned into methane gas even. Some of that can, however, be burned in order to create energy and heat. Better than putting it into holes in the ground, I should think.
Waste incineration to create electricity and heat must be part of the “renewables” circle as much as methane gas powered electricity plants and others. Otherwise we would be wasting resources. Oil (and natural gas) are coming to an end and there is no such thing as clean coal.
Pellets from the wood industry too and chippings should find a use in power plants but here best in heating homes and offices, as well as producing electricity via Sterling engines, for instance.
© 2011
