October 11, 2006 - Exclusive
By Dallas Kachan, cleantech.com
Incinerating waste and turning it into energy solves two problems at once. And it's gaining momentum, but is it really "clean tech"?
It's not as sexy as wind or solar, but waste-to-energy has been getting more political and environmental attention, particularly in Europe, where it's much farther along than elsewhere.
An important component of integrated waste management strategies, waste-to-energy assists in waste incineration to relieve pressure on landfill and dispose of waste that cannot be recycled. Energy generated is fed either back into the plant itself or into the local grid.
Frost & Sullivan says that the European waste-to-energy plants markets represented a $1.8 billion market in 2005, and estimates this to reach $2.7 billion in 2010.
"Among other factors, landfill legislation and increasing waste volumes are prompting countries to revisit waste management strategies and develop more cost-effective, sustainable solutions," says Frost & Sullivan's Energy and Environment Practice Director John Raspin. "The EU Landfill Directive, which sets targets for the reduction of land-filling of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) represents tremendous growth potential. This Directive, coupled with the short supply of new landfill void space in Europe, is driving alternative waste disposal strategies including waste-to-energy."
Increased production of refuse derived fuel (RDF) in countries such as Germany and shortfall in the capacity for disposing such pre-treated waste will create greater need for new waste-to-energy plants.
Currently, over 400 waste-to-energy plants in Europe process about 50 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per year. However, as a result of the Landfill Directive, this number is likely to increase and over 100 plants or lines are expected to be installed by 2012.
A model of waste-to-energy is the City of Amsterdam's Waste and Energy Company, which, for the better part of 100 years, has been turning virtually all of the city's waste into recycled-grade metal, gypsum and salt. The process uses some 30 innovations, all developed in-house.
"We're able to take 99% of the city's waste and incinerate it with virtually zero discharge," said Jan van der Meulen, Deputy Director of the Directorate for City Counseling of the City of Amsterdam. He introduced the Waste and Energy Company's capabilities today to attendees at the International Sustainable Energy Forum in San Francisco.
Despite the apparent benefits of waste-to-energy technology, it's met with public opposition from environmental groups and local communities over the safety of waste incineration. This has hindered the implementation of new projects. Vendors insist the technology is safe. Others aren't so sure.
"The effects of emission on public health, increase in traffic and pollution associated with transporting waste for incineration are key concerns likely to hamper market expansion," says Raspin. "While the markets offer opportunities through high-value capital-intensive contracts and operational revenues, risks of project cancellation pose a significant challenge."
In view of long waiting periods involved in project planning and the risks of project cancellation, waste-to-energy suppliers will need to work closely with local communities and municipalities to promote projects. With the rise in competition, the markets are witnessing an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions and competition is set to intensify.
However, significant opportunities exist, say Frost & Sullivan, for companies that can target and explore specific areas of growth. Strengthening product and financial positioning through consolidation, enhancing brand name and customer services, as well as meeting environmental demands of legislations and customers are some of the key factors that will influence market success.
Rising grain prices put a dent in fuel revolution
Daniel Lewis
October 20, 2007
EVENTS in the Middle East this week should have guaranteed towns such as Condobolin a thriving role in the biofuels revolution.
Turkey's determination to go after Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq spooked markets and saw the global oil price reach record highs of nearly $US90 ($101) a barrel.
That's more than twice the price at which an ethanol industry was supposed to be a viable concern in Australia.
But this week Oaklands, Coleambally and Condobolin in NSW, and Swan Hill just over the Murray River in Victoria, were dealing with news that proposed Agri Energy ethanol plants had been put indefinitely on hold.
The Melbourne company told the Australian Stock Exchange the decision was "a result of … ongoing high feedstock prices and continued uncertainty from the investment community, government and community support for alternative transport fuels in Australia. Investment in offshore markets, particularly the United States and European biofuels industries, represents a preferred medium-term focus."
NSW has only one ethanol plant - the Manildra facility at Nowra with a capacity of 100 million litres a year - but earlier this year there were proposals and plans for enough plants to increase capacity to well over a billion litres.
When the rural newspaper The Land looked at the predicted biofuels boom six months ago, it noted: "Ethanol plants in NSW are set to consume a massive 4 million tonnes or more of wheat, barley, sorghum and maize annually by 2009 if all the projects approved or on the drawing boards go ahead.
"That's about half the state's average production of these grain crops, which averaged about 9 million tonnes annually in the past five years - and is more than the total grain tonnage produced from last season's drought-depleted 2006-07 harvest. The figures suggest intense competition [for grain] is looming … in good seasons, and serious grain shortages in bad years."
One of Agri Energy's NSW sites was set to become home to the company's second ethanol plant after it completed Swan Hill, which was supposed to go into operation next year.
At Condobolin, where the company wanted to build a 200 million-litre plant consuming 600,000 tonnes of grain a year, Lachlan Shire Council's general manager, George Cowan, said the disappointed town had invested a lot of hope in the project.
At the same time, he said, years of failed or very poor grain harvests in the district due to drought meant there were "real questions about it in terms of sustainability … you can't help wondering about the long-term impacts of climate change".
At Oaklands, near Corowa on the Murray River, grain grower Pat Day offered part of his farmland to Agri Energy to build a plant the same size as Condobolin's. He encouraged the venture because he hoped it would lead to employment growth and stability in grain prices.
Day holds no grudges against the company. "I'm just disappointed. Governments haven't come up with the necessary mandating to encourage [Agri Energy] to keep going. They have got better opportunities in other parts of the world."
Oaklands is also an example of how the Murray-Darling Basin's precarious water supply could undermine the ethanol industry. Agri Energy was looking for 3000 megalitres a year - that's eight Olympic swimming pools a day - through the neighbouring Corurgan irrigation scheme. But no water has flowed through Corurgan since February and it's unlikely any will for another year.
The $100 million Swan Hill project was Agri Energy's most advanced. About $9 million had already been spent on planning, land and infrastructure.
The Swan Hill operations manager, Stewart Rendell, blames government and oil companies for Agri Energy's troubles, rather than record-high grain prices.
"You can't deal with big oil in this country when there's no mandate," he says. "Even when you bring the wheat price back to a reasonable level, big oil don't need to deal with us." Oil companies were prepared to buy the ethanol, but not at realistic prices.
Rendell says that if every state mandated 2 per cent ethanol, as NSW has, or the price of oil rose above $US100 a barrel, as some are forecasting for next year, Agri Energy would reconsider the viability of its Australian projects.
Swan Hill Council and the neighbouring NSW shire of Wakool have already been given more than $10 million by the Federal Government to upgrade roads to cope with the demands of the ethanol plant. "We will just have to see now whether we have to pay that money back," Swan Hill's mayor, Gary Norton, says.
The chief executive of Coleambally Irrigation, Murray Smith, says another business has plans for an ethanol plant in the district and there was only ever room for one. "It's still all positive," Smith says.
Others are equally bullish. Matthew Kelley grows grain on the Liverpool Plains near Gunnedah and is chief executive of an ethanol company, Primary Energy. He says "all the lights are green" for a plant in Perth and he plans to build plants in Brisbane and Gunnedah. "We are in for the long haul," Kelley says.
Construction of the $400 million Perth plant, with annual production of 160 million litres, is set to start early next year. The Gunnedah plant would be the same size and consume up to 400,000 tonnes of grain a year.
The key to Kelley's optimism is a commitment from BP to buy whatever ethanol the plants produce.
Waste Management to boost recycling, waste to energy
October 11, 2007
The company plans to double its waste to energy plants and more than double its recycling volume.
Houston's Waste Management (NYSE: WMI) announced big plans today to boost its green initiatives.
The No. 1 waste services company in the U.S. said it would double its waste to energy plants, more than double the amount of recyclable materials it processes, and clean up its fleet operations by 2020.
Waste Management, which already creates enough energy for the equivalent of 1 million homes each year, said it expects to double that output to the equivalent of more than 2 million homes.
The company also plans to boost the volume of recyclable materials it processes to 20 million tons, up from 8 million tons.
Last month, the company said it would build 60 new landfill gas to energy facilities over the next five years.
"With each person in North America producing four and a half pounds of garbage each day, we've become a leader in environmental stewardship," said David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management.
The company didn't peg an overall cost for the initiative, but did say that it expects to spend up to $5 billion on its fleet. Waste Management plans to increase the fuel efficiency of its trucks by 15 percent and reduce emissions by 15 percent by 2020.
"We're a company that protects and enhances the environment through what we do each and every day. We believe that as we improve our environmental stewardship, our profitability will improve as well," said Steiner.
Garbage in, clean energy out
August 21, 2007 - Exclusive
By David Ehrlich, cleantech.com
Plasco Energy's unique waste to energy plant in Ottawa is getting ready to go online, and garbage-laden municipalities around the world are watching.
Canada's Plasco Energy Group has been giving tours of its first full-scale waste to energy plant in Ottawa this week to officials from around the province and around the world.
It sits about 20 miles outside of downtown, right across the road from its competition, the Trail Road Landfill.
The plant, which is expected to take in 85 tonnes of waste per day when it starts operations by the end of September, uses a unique plasma torch process that applies intense heat to waste materials in a completely closed, controlled, and oxygen-starved environment.
With an output of mostly synthetic gas, used to generate electricity with an internal combustion engine, aggregate, which can be sold and used in asphalt, and potable water, this is definitely not your mother's incinerator.
Rod Bryden, president and CEO of Plasco, told Cleantech.com that air is added in incineration. "That allows the waste to burn."
There's no oxygen in Plasco's process and no hazardous emissions are released into the atmosphere.
With incineration, Bryden said "the share of the waste that can be converted to power is not more than 18 to 22 percent."
"In ours we get about 44 percent to about 50 percent," he said. "A little more than twice as much power."
Bryden said gasification, which also uses oxygen, is about as inefficient as incineration.
Visitors to the plant this week are in town for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference. Bryden said about 1,400 of the attendees are taking tours of the plant.
Mexico's secretary of the environment, in town for the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting, also got a tour of the plant.
Mexico joins Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom and others who are looking at Plasco's technology.
The company, which finished construction on the commercial-scale plant at the end of June, has operated plasma-based research and development and test facilities in Ottawa and Spain for more than a decade.
Plasco and Spanish waste management company Hera have plans for a commercial-scale plant to be up and running in Barcelona by the fall of 2008.
In North America, Edmonton, Alberta, plans to open a facility in 2010, and Plasco has put in a bid for a plant in Los Angeles.
For the past three weeks, Plasco has been testing the Ottawa plant for one day a week, pouring about 4 tonnes an hour through the plant, or about 100 tonnes per day.
Starting next week, they'll up the ante, raising the number of days of testing through to the end of September.
"The system is designed to achieve close to optimal efficiency at about 200 tonnes a day," said Bryden. "That's about 20 garbage trucks a day" he said.
The company's permit with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment is only for 85 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, which would generate a total of 5 megawatts of power.
With 1 MW required to power the facility, 4 MW will be left over, enough to power 3,600 homes in Ottawa.
Plasco plans to charge the municipality a tipping fee for disposing of waste and will sell its surplus electricity.
And Plasco plans to be as efficient in its energy delivery as it is in its waste-to-energy ratio. The plant is connected to the distribution system in Ottawa, not directly to the grid, which Bryden said decongests the grid.
"It's like having your job in the local community where you live, you are not one of those that clogs the highway at 5-o'clock," he said.
Keeping things local also avoids line loss during transmission, which Bryden said is typically 5 to 7 percent.
But even with Plasco's highly efficient system, there is still a very small amount left over in the waste processing that can't be used.
"There is 1.3 kilograms per tonne of waste that requires disposal," said Bryden. That includes the activated carbon filter and the heavy metals that are captured in that filter, typically mercury, cadmium and lead.
"So out of a tonne of waste that comes in, there is one tenth of one percent that requires still to be disposed of," he said.
Ren Waste Expands International Holdings
21 November 2007, (Johannesburg, SA) – South African Waste Management innovator, Ren Waste, is pleased to announce that it has formed a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) company with Mr. Joy Rabotapi and his partners. The company will be called Ren Waste (SA) Ltd. Discussions and negotiations are already underway with various key municipalities in the country concerning their waste management needs.
"We are very proud to be a leading player in this important, new government initiative," said Shai Pinczewski, CEO of Ren Waste. The Black Economic Empowerment program was launched by the South African government to redress inequalities resulting from Apartheid. The BEE Program offers disadvantaged groups economic opportunities that were not previously available to them. This program is intended to make the economy more demographically representative and better reflect the make up of the country.
"This partnership is also a very important for our company," Pinczewski added, explaining that waste management was now a major global problem and that the more modern, industrialized countries that were interested in finding environmentally positive solutions, the better it would be for our collective future.
The Ren Waste Solution is particularly suited to Southern Africa in that not only will it help to clean the environment , but also solve some of the problems by creating meaningful output of reliable, clean and renewable energy and water.
About Ren Waste
Ren Waste in a leading international provider of innovative, environmentally friendly municipal waste solutions. The Ren Waste total-waste-to-clean energy plant in South Africa provides total solutions for cities' municipal solid wastes. Its plant receives 100% of a community's solid waste and sewage sludge whether residential, industrial or agricultural. It processes 1,500 to 15,000 metric tons daily and through an environmentally friendly, self sustaining process, it produces efficient, clean and renewable energy including electricity, ethanol and potable water.
REN Waste will also offer other services through its Ren Waste Sewage ConversionSystem which, accepts sludge in any suspended solids concentration and converts it into ethanol and methane. Other Ren Waste processes includeManure to Ethanol Plant, Pyrolysis of tires and hazardous dump sites.
Contact information:
Ren Waste Ltd - Shai Pinczewski, Cyprus + 35 722444500
Ren Waste (SA) Ltd - Joy Rabotapi, Gauteng, South Africa +27 (0) 11 783 8997
