While we
didn’t recognize it at the time, MSW Management’s path to this question
began in 1995, when our sister magazine Remediation Management focused
attention on the groundwater threat posed by MTBE. It was in 1996 that we
suggested in MSW Management that converting MSW to ethanol as a
replacement for MTBE in gasoline might provide beneficial solutions to air,
water, and waste challenges. It was not until 1999 that governing and regulating
agencies around the country suddenly became aware of the risk and began to take
action to ban the use of MTBE-laced fuels. It was at this juncture that many in
the waste field sensed an opportunity for adding options to those strategies
whose success seemed stalled at or near a 50% diversion rate.
“Has the time
come to subject organic products, byproducts, and wastes to thermal, chemical,
and/or biological degradation?”
We posed this
question to a diverse group of industry and government representatives at a
colloquy held in Santa Barbara, CA, on December 2–3, 1999, jointly hosted by the
Wendy P. McCaw Foundation and MSW
Management. The general objective was to explore certain fundamental
questions relating to sustainable materials management in the 21st century and
the potential role of new conversion technologies (CTs) in processing portions
of the solid wastestream into renewable and environmentally benign fuels,
chemicals, and sources of clean energy. Of particular concern was how government
policies and functions may need to change to anticipate, catalyze, and respond
to these future developments while ensuring and enhancing environmental
protection, resource conversion and recovery, economic development, and other
related public policy goals.
The Santa
Barbara colloquy identified a number of issues and barriers that participants
felt needed addressing, among which were:
* Financing of
initial projects...the so-called “Valley of Death”
*
Permitting
challenges, particularly at MSW rather than traditional production
facilities
* Access
to MSW feedstocks in the face of continued industry
consolidation
Access
to markets presently controlled by the large energy
companies
*
Reluctance of
traditional recycling interests to embrace new technologies for fear of losing
hard-won ground
Most
participants felt that while a transfer from petrochemical to bio-based
feedstocks for products and energy might come about as development costs of the
former continued to rise, short-term prospects hinged on such particular events
as a shift from MTBE to ethanol as a fuel oxygenate, or the rise of national
security concerns.
A year later
the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) continued the effort
with its May 2001 Conversion Technology conference that added several more items
to the list of challenges, including lack of political leadership, statutory
constraints, lack of funding, opposition to feedstock access, and public
perception and understanding of the technologies and processes involved. To
address this, the CIWMB directed action in five key areas: (1) interagency
coordination, (2) follow-up workshops/symposia, (3) leveraging federal and state
monies, (4) legislative proposal for small-scale grants and lifecycle analysis
research, and (5) assisting applicants in permit process.
In the wake of
the conference, CIWMB developed a strategic plan on the basis of the growing
belief that CTs could be a major step towards zero waste by “...harnessing the
energy potential in ‘waste’ by using new and clean technology to convert the
material directly into green fuel or gas to produce
electricity.”
Goals and
objectives of the strategic plan were: (1) defining environmentally preferable
technologies, (2) promoting new technologies and processes, and (3) developing
alternative means of diversion, including technologies that result in
electricity and fuel. The plan was adopted in April 2002.
In the
intervening years since the plan’s adoption, the CIWMB has stuck to its guns,
choosing to meet well-organized political opposition with a well-reasoned,
science-based approach that has reached its present state with the completion of
a study by University of California, Riverside College of Engineering–Center for
Environmental Research and Technology, whose summary report, “Evaluation of
Environmental Impacts of Thermochemical Conversion Technologies Using Municipal
Solid Waste Feedstocks,” can be found here.
For reasons
that escape my feeble efforts at understanding the marvelous workings of
government, members of the California Legislature effectively suppressed the
report, going so far in the effort by threatening reprisals against members of
the CIWMB.
Today, the downturn in the global
economy has radically altered the waste management picture by reducing materials
in the US wastestream and all but destroying offshore recyclables markets.
Resulting revenue losses have caused many waste management operators to review
and in many cases cut back on services…recycling activities among the most
vulnerable. Yet at the same time, many authorities are stuck with diversion rate
goals and mandates that few of us want to see scrapped. So here we are again,
wondering if we haven’t reached a tipping point that favors energy from waste,
whether we’re talking about thermal WTE or any of the CTs awaiting full-scale
development.
What are your thoughts?