Perhaps this has not been a popular option because other people may also be
assuming what I did, that WTE = incineration= air pollution. But I kept reading
because I respect Francis Vanek's work. And this would NOT be incineration.
I agree with Joel: Looks like a win-win-win solution. Ah, there should be at
least one more "win" there, for Lansing; hmm, just thought of another: maybe I
should start counting (I think Joel didn't mention some of these because they
were obvious, like jobs and taxes):
1. better for local jobs than a gas plant or a shut-down.
2. good for local tax base (train service to the plant means enough trash could
come in to make it profitable, which is the basis for the taxes paid--and
perhaps take long distance trash trucks off the road).
3. less water pollution: both coal and gas pollute the area where they are
extracted; coal leaves an ash dump where it is burned
4. less heat-trapping emissions than coal OR methane (AKA natural gas), both
of which release unburned methane at extraction, and of course methane leaks at
EVERY stage until point of intentional combustion, when it still release
significant CO2 (42% of what coal does)
plus the 5 points Joel made (not in order):
1. "toxic emissions from the plant would be reduced by 99% (from current)"
2. "consumption of water at the plant could be reduced by at least 50% (from
current consumption levels)"
3. "it would have a new 40-year life" [NOTE: a gas-fired plant LOCKS us into a
'wrong-way" fossil fuel until at least 2050 because of the high cost of the
initial infrastructure]
4. "using municipal waste as fuel would reduce the amount of waste going into
landfills" (I expect a LOT of blowback from Casella and other land-fill
corporations on this aspect; they would not be happy to have WTE replacing
landfills, even though locally they could have an increase in trucking
contracts).
5. "plant efficiency would increase dramatically" QUERY: what does
"efficiency" means here?
Partially an actual question on my part, partially rhetorical. Actual:
Does "efficient" mean more electricity per ton of trash burned than ton of coal
burned? If more "efficient" than gas, in what way?
My rhetorical rant (assuming efficiency refers only to "efficient at
producing electricity at the generating plant"): I have the impression that
industry--and even many academics doing Life Cycle Analyses--define "efficient"
in a very limited way. ANY extreme extraction of fossil fuels, such as
mountaintop removal coal mining, fracking for gas or oil; tar sands oil, etc,
is inherently "inefficient," tho the extraction corporations are masters at
externalizing costs.
That looks like a LOT of "wins"!
Question: how easily can it be brought on/off line, as the power is needed to
meet peak usage and/or to complement renewables?
But since there are two reasons plants are brought on/off line (selling
price on current electricity market, and time/cost/trouble to bring
on/offline), perhaps this would be cheap enough that it could be used
year-round?
Margaret McCasland
Lansing
On Jul 23, 2013, at 1:43 AM, Joel Rabinowitz wrote:
> Why is it that Waste-to-Energy (WTE) has not seriously been considered as a
> conversion strategy for the Cayuga Power Plant (aka Milliken Station) in
> Lansing? In 2012 a group of Cornell engineering students under the direction
> of Francis Vanek conducted a detailed study of WTE as a possible energy
> source for the Lansing/Cayuga plant, and found that it "appeared to be cost
> competitive, could use existing infrastructure with minor capital investments
> for facility changes at Milliken Station, and has the additional
> environmental benefit of reducing landfilling of municipal garbage."
>
> In late May (May 31?) Francis Vanek published a letter in the Ithaca Journal
> that highlighted this idea, but somehow it hasn't excited the interest of the
> local sustainability community or of key local decision makers such as
> members of the Tompkins County Legislature. Why not?
>
> The plant's owners want to convert it from a coal plant to natural gas, while
> most of us who are concerned about fracking want the plant mothballed and its
> energy replaced by energy generated by renewable sources from elsewhere.
> Lansing residents (many of whom oppose gas drilling by fracking) and the
> Lansing School District are understandably worried about what the loss of the
> existing plant would do to the district's tax base. These two polarized
> positions are apparently the only ones that will be seriously considered at
> the upcoming Public Service Commission (PSC) forum next week (July 29).
>
> So why not convert the plant to operate on WTE fuel? Eighty-nine WTE plants
> currently operate in the US, including 10 in NY State. My wife, Dorothy
> Pomponio, recently corresponded with Richard Lewis, a representative for
> Recovered Energy, Inc., which facilitates retrofitting of existing coal-fired
> power plants to operate using waste as fuel. Plasma gasification is the
> method used to convert the waste to energy; it does not incinerate the waste,
> but heats it to such high temperatures that organic waste becomes a gas
> (fuel), and inorganic waste is vitrified. Mr. Lewis wrote to Dorothy that
> toxic emissions from the plant would be reduced by 99% (from current);
> consumption of water at the plant could be reduced by at least 50% (from
> current consumption levels); plant efficiency would increase dramatically; it
> would have a new 40-year life; and using municipal waste as fuel would reduce
> the amount of waste going into landfills.
>
> For details, visit the website at http://recoveredenergy.com/
>
> This sounds like a win-win-win to me. So why isn't WTE conversion part of
> the current debate over what to do with the Cayuga Power Plant in Lansing?
>
> Joel Rabinowitz
> Executive Director
> Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve
>
> 607-279-7393
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