Lee County (FL) has been certified by the Voluntary Carbon Standard to generate carbon offsets which can be sold to those entities wishing to acquire carbon credits.  By emitting less greenhouse gases than its alternatives, the county has banked more than 80,000 carbon credits. Lee County's waste-to-energy plant will become first in the nation to sell its own carbon credits on the voluntary market. The price for carbon credit on the voluntary market ranges anywhere from 50-cents to five-dollars per credit. The money generated by these credits will go to offset garbage collection fees, which means residents of Lee County could eventually see a lower bill.  Please click here for an article describing how the process works. 

A major new study shows that hundreds of thousands of new American jobs in the wind, solar, biomass, waste-to-energy and hydropower industries would be created through a 25% by 2025 national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). The "Job Impacts of a National Renewable Electricity Standard" study, conducted by independent firm Navigant Consulting and released by the RES Alliance for Jobs, found that a 25% by 2025 national RES would support an additional 274,000 renewable energy jobs - the equivalent of a cumulative 2.36 million job-years of work -- over a no-national policy option. The study emphasizes that while tax credits continue to play a critically important role in preserving the viability of existing facilities, an RES is needed in order to support both near- and long-term investments. To read the report, visit www.res-alliance.org/res-jobs-study.  A backgrounder can be downloaded here.

The City of Honolulu broke ground in December on the long-awaited expansion plans for Honolulu’s H-Power plant. The $302 million project will expand the waste-to-energy plant’s capacity by 50 percent to handle an added 300,000 tons of garbage a year at the Campbell Industrial Park facility. Processing capacity will increase to 900,000 tons at the 28-acre plant, which is owned by the City and County of Honolulu. That volume will be able to generate 84 megawatts of power, which represents about 6 percent of Oahu’s electricity needs.  The project will create approximately 300 construction jobs as well as additional jobs to operate and maintain the facility when it’s completed in two years. With Oahu residents generating about 1.5 million tons of garbage each year, the expanded capacity at H-Power will help reduce the tonnage sent to Oahu’s only landfill, Waimanalo Gulch.

Union County Utilities Authority Sunil Garg states that waste to energy is "probalby one of the greatest stories never told."  As the holidays are celebrated in the U.S. (and abroad), waste is generated in copious amounts.  Mounds of wrapping paper. Millions of bows and decorations. Plenty of plastic. And more than just a little bit of leftover food scraps.  MyCentralJersey.com writes an informative article highlighting how the holiday leftovers in Union County, NJ will steer clear of landfills and will help generate the same electricity that will keep the Christmas lights running this season. 

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette ran an insightful editorial lamenting Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s decision to extend the moratorium on new waste-to-energy capacity in Massachusetts.  The T&G editorial board found the Governor's decision to be "a disappointing reflection of either/or thinking that will leave Massachusetts with fewer options than it should have in its battle to reduce, recycle and reuse."  The editorial noted that "since 1990, WTE facilities have cut 90 percent or more of the major pollutants they emit [and] placing a ton of solid waste in a landfill means emitting about 33 percent more greenhouse gases than are emitted by incinerating that same ton of waste — and without producing any electricity. "