The 22nd Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference (NAWTEC) is just around the corner.  Register today!  NAWTEC, which will take place May 7-9 in Reston, VA (metropolitan Washington, DC), is recognized as the industry’s premier conference and trade show focusing on municipal waste-to-energy business, operational and policy issues, as well as technology and research initiatives.  NAWTEC 22 features:

• Real Insight through in-depth sessions, addressing issues such as development of new WTE capacity, enhancing business opportunities in core WTE services, examining recent developments in waste conversion technologies, enhancing operations, exploring the work being done by the Department of Defense to increase renewable capacity and how waste-to-energy can capitalize on those opportunities, examining the latest research and technology, and more.
• Real Solutions with a variety of exhibitors providing critical products and services to the waste-to-energy industry.
• Real First-hand Experiences with a tour of the Montgomery County Resource Recovery Facility in Dickerson, Maryland.

Please visit www.nawtec.org for information on registration, the hotel, and the program. 

The Center for American Progress (CAP) published an article online this week in which author Matt Kasper discusses the importance of waste-to-energy as a means for the Obama Administration to achieve its goals in reducing methane emissions.  CAP asserts that the recent release of the White House’s Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions is a promising step forward, but that there are more policies that the administration should pursue---such as utilization of waste-to-energy, which will reduce landfill methane emissions and offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated from coal and natural gas power plants. Additionally, states should be allowed to incorporate WTE technology in their implementation plans to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s, or EPA’s, forthcoming carbon-pollution (111(d)) standards.  CAP states that when the EPA begins to take public comments on the landfill standards, the use of energy-recovery facilities must be on the agency’s agenda. To read the article, click here.  This builds upon a 2013 article published by CAP entitled, "Energy from Waste Can Help Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

Darryl Banks, Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress, will discuss the opportunities for WTE to reduce GHGs during Session 2 of the North American Waste-to-Energy Conference in Reston, VA on May 8.  Please visit www.nawtec.org to register.

The Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority (LCSWMA) has officially acquired the Susquehanna Resource Management Complex (SRMC), formerly known as the Harrisburg Resource Recovery Facility, for a total purchase price of $129,890,000.  The purchase is supported by 20-year waste disposal contracts with the City of Harrisburg and Dauphin County, in addition to a 20-year power purchase agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of General Services.  This project is the first public to public acquisition of a waste-to-energy facility in the United States and was a key ingredient in relieving the distressed City of Harrisburg from over $360 million of debt.  LCSWMA’s newly expanded system will now manage approximately 900,000 tons of solid waste with annual revenues of approximately $85 million.  “This innovative, strategic acquisition will provide the region with future waste processing capacity and offer additional flexibility to LCSWMA’s already robust Integrated System,” said James Warner, LCSWMA’s CEO.  Covanta Energy will continue operating the WTE facility portion of the site under an amended agreement with LCSWMA.  LCSWMA’s business plan includes a series of capital improvements to the site over the next four years totaling $18.25 million, including: installing new scales and implementing traffic flow patterns to improve on-site time for customers; constructing a new small vehicle drop-off building for residents and deliveries of construction/demolition waste; purchasing equipment for upgrades to the WTE facility; expanding the current tipping floor; constructing a new building for ash storage; revamping the current site entrances; and implementing extensive landscaping work.  

Eileen Berenyi of Governmental Advisory Associates released a report entitled “Nationwide Economic Benefits of the Waste-to-Energy Sector,” which concludes that the total economic contribution of the United States waste-to-energy sector is $5.6 billion of gross economic sales output.  The sector encompasses nearly 14,000 direct and indirect jobs and nearly $890 million of total labor compensation.  In 2010, the waste-to-energy sector directly employed 5,350 people servicing 85 plants in the United States.  Direct labor earnings for those employees totaled $459 million in wages, salaries and benefits paid to WTE employees in the United States.  An additional 8,557 full time equivalent jobs are created in the U.S. outside the WTE sector, based on an estimated 1.6 additional jobs supported by each direct waste-to-energy job.  As a result of the WTE sector, those nearly 8,600 jobs yielded an additional $429 million in wages, salaries and benefits received by workers outside the waste-to-energy sector. 

Shawn Lawrence Otto is a science writer, filmmaker, novelist, and the co-founder of ScienceDebate.org, the home of the US presidential science debates. His new book is Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. He lives in a wind-powered, passive solar, superinsulated geothermal home he designed and built with his own hands. He recycles, composts and drives a hybrid car.  And in several media outlets, he provides a thorough and well reasoned opinion that waste-to-energy is a clean and renewable technology that is being held back by unwarranted fears.  In the article, he examines evidence showing recycling and WTE are complementary, demonstrates that clean air technology cuts emissions of waste-to-energy to near-zero, fights the myth that WTE is toxic, and concludes that WTE helps fight climate change.  Read the article in its entirety, here.