Submitted by Corey Johnson, Jul 28, 2007 17:19

A new generation of incineration in New York is what is needed, this time they will produce electricity and heat from the waste and emit so little pollution that people will not even notice them.

Addition of WTE means that ConEd will not have to burn so much natural gas in order to generate electricity and heat for the city. Each ton of trash has around 1.5 MWh of thermal energy in it - up to about 0.5 MWh can be converted to electricity, the rest as heat for the district heating system. At 13,500 tons per day and a 50% recycling rate, that is 10,125 megawatt-hours of energy per day - 960 tons of oil equivalent.
In Europe it is common to store waste in bales at WTE plants during hot summer months for combustion during winter to produce extra heat.

To get the benefits of the district heat, the incinerators need to be put IN THE CITY - not in New Jersey or upstate. People need to realize that the waste they produce needs to be treated, and they cannot continue to place the burden elsewhere. They can either accept the treatment, or stop producing so much trash!

Along with what the WTE plants would actually produce, think of all of the energy and GHG emissions saved by not having to haul waste for 200+ miles on filthy diesel trucks. The ash has to go somewhere, but that is 10% of the original volume and 25% of the original weight for trucking.

As to whether this is feasible or not, we have 100 WTE plants running in the U.S. right now cranking out 2800 MW of electricity with great success. Europe has hundreds more (making both heat and electricity), and many countries have laws which forbid landfilling of combustible waste. Sweden, Norway, Denmark - the world's environmental leaders - have extensive use of waste-to-energy (most are publicly owned and operated). Sweden and Denmark have combustible waste landfill restrictions. Japan is also a heavy user of incineration, both waste-to-energy and old-style 'burn it to get rid of it' types of facilities.

There are three choices:

1. Incinerate. Burn what you can't recycle.
2. Initiate some massive cultural shift to create zero waste. In New York? Yeah...
3. Continue the never-ending battle about what to do with waste. Private or Public, it will continue to be shipped out on cruddy diesel trucks. There are no places to bury it in the city. You lose here when it comes to the waste's material and energy values.

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