By John F. Williams and N.C. Vasuki

Results of a recent Google search for key words “energy crisis” produced 31,100,000 hits. Try the same search today. Are the results still increasing? A quick browse through news and Web links indicates a potpourri of opinions and ideas regarding the presence and timing of a genuine crisis. Is there a crisis? Is it coming? Is it here? Is it permanent? Is it a scam?

This search effort concludes that there is broadly held concern regarding short and long term availability of sufficient supplies of fuel. In simple terms, the law of supply and demand is real and effective. We have a problem, and we can find solutions to mitigate the economic damage. Plainly stated, it is wrong to waste energy, and we are smart enough to take action to increase energy efficiency. That involves evaluation of all energy sources. As a society, are we just blaming OPEC for our rising energy costs, or are we ready to reduce our reliance on imported oil?

American households are drawing their own conclusions, and they are dramatic. The coming heating season, combined with higher gasoline prices, is producing an adverse economic impact on every level of society. Across the country, the media portrays elderly couples choosing between food for their tables and heat for their homes, factory workers choosing between transportation to the workplace and medication for their families. Headlines from corporations and business owners indicate dropping sales as prices increase and consumers spend less.

Among the many Google links was this pertinent quote from Hermann Scheer, author of A Solar Manifesto: “Today, more than ever before, there is the most urgency for answers to the question of why there are no political strategies, long overdue, to achieve peace with nature.” It suggests that our planning for energy sufficiency is faulty, short-term, and without resolve. Households throughout the nation have to reallocate their resources to offset the rapidly rising cost of utilities. Our normal American can-do approach to bridge the gap between energy supply and demand is missing.

It is too early to tell how this will affect the nation’s overall economy and our standard of living. However, we should emerge from the winter of 2006 in full agreement that not only is it costly but it is wrong to waste energy.

Is it the production of energy that is the issue? There is little question that our nation has the technical and financial capability to generate energy sufficient to keep our households and economy going at least in the near term. The actual problem has to do with the mix of fuels used to meet our energy needs rather than with the sufficiency of supply.

We, the people, must demand a viable, pragmatic National Energy Policy that does more than provide lip service to the strategic importance of building and maintaining a diverse portfolio of fuels. Our traditional reliance on coal, gas, oil, hydroelectric and nuclear power should be broadened to include renewable and homegrown fuels, beginning with recovered solid waste, biomass, methane, ethanol, wind and solar-based power. The recent Energy Bill provides seeds of hope but falls well short of encouraging development of renewable fuels.

This year, our nation will landfill over 130 million tons of solid waste. We treat these recycling leftovers as valueless trash, paying as much as $3.9 billion for disposal (an average of $30 per ton) But the materials we discard after recycling have suitable combustibility for the production of energy. Currently we are using about 34 million tons of solid waste for energy production, offsetting 51 million barrels of oil imports. At $60 per barrel, that fuel is worth $3 billion! It is a sham—no, it is wrong—to waste this homegrown fuel. Our National Energy Policy must insist that we make efficient use of the potential fuel we discard every day, especially in the densely populated metropolitan areas. We should do our best to finish the recycling process by extracting the fuel value remaining in each ton of solid waste. If we diverted another 34 million tons of combustible solid waste for energy recovery, we could reduce our oil imports by another 51 million barrels.

Our competitor, the European Union, encourages use of solid waste as fuel for energy production. The EU has 409 waste-to-energy plants, producing enough energy to serve 25 million people by using 55 million tons of solid waste as fuel per year. The high world market oil price provides an opportunity to maximize the use of renewable fuels and to overcome the objections of the usual coteries raising the specter of dioxin emissions.

If we are unable to develop more waste-to-energy plants because of political inaction and miasma, let us, at least, design and operate large landfills as long-term storage warehouses and efficiently extract methane gas as a reliable renewable fuel. Let us also alter our environmental policies, laws and regulations to allow future mining of landfills to extract non-degradable combustible materials (plastics and heavy wood). If the United States Congress acts to set the purchase price of electricity generated from renewable fuels at 6 cents per kWh on a national basis, the current landfills will have sufficient incentive to improve efficiency of landfill gas systems.

The readers of this magazine are all in a position to contribute to the solution for a major portion of the nation’s fuel crisis. They know how to manage, refine, and recover a fuel product and energy itself from the solid waste stream.

At a time when Congress is calling for oil companies to search for and invest in developing new types of fuel, our nation throws away material that has proved to be a clean (according to the EPA) and reliable fuel. In fact, other advanced nations discovered the true value of recovered solid fuels years ago. Japan, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and others have been recovering energy from their leftovers for decades. They have not suffered environmental damage or encountered public health problems.

This winter we will all be reminded that it is time for our industry to be a part of the solution. It’s wrong to waste energy. It’s right to turn to renewable, homegrown fuel.

John F. Williams is vice president of HDR Inc. at White Plains, NY, and N.C. Vasuki is general manager of the Delaware Solid Waste Authority and President of the International Solid Waste Association.

MSW - January/February 2006