With the majority of America’s energy currently being produced by fossil fuel-fired power plants, the steam and renewable electricity generated by the nation’s 87 waste-to-energy plants are valuable commodities. These waste-to-energy facilities have a power generating capacity of nearly 2,700 megawatts of clean electricity. Unlike other types of renewable resources, waste-to-energy is considered base load power that operates 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. As a result, these facilities reliably generate approximately 17 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year—enough power approximately 2 million American homes.  This accounts for nearly 20 percent of all renewable electricity generation in the United States.

Today’s waste-to-energy plants are highly efficient power plants that utilize municipal solid waste as their fuel rather than coal, oil or natural gas. Far better than expending energy to explore, recover, process and transport the fuel from some distant source, waste-to-energy plants find value in what others consider garbage. Waste-to-energy plants recover the thermal energy contained in the trash in highly efficient boilers that generate steam that can then be sold directly to industrial customers, or used on-site to drive turbines for electricity production.

Waste-to-energy meets the two basic criteria for establishing what a renewable energy resource is—its fuel source (trash) is sustainable and indigenous.  Waste-to-energy facilities recover valuable energy from trash after efforts to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” have been implemented by households and local governments.

The renewable electricity produced at these facilities is so valuable that Congress included waste-to-energy in the Section 45 Production Tax Credit to encourage development of waste-to-energy and other renewable technologies.

Furthermore, waste-to-energy has been recognized as renewable in federal law more more than 30 years.  Statutes that define waste-to-energy as renewable include:

• AmeBrican Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus Bill)
• Energy Policy Act of 2005
• Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978
• Biomass Research and Development Act of 2000
• Pacific Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Act
• Federal Power Act
• Internal Revenue Code
• Laws of 24 States and the District of Columbia

Showing that waste-to-energy can help lead the way to a cleaner, more energy independent future, the Davos Report, produced by the World Economic Forum in 2009, cited waste-to-energy among eight emerging "green" technologies that can help reduce greenhouse gases and change the world's energy consumption patterns.


Resources:

Davos Report

ERC State Renewable Fact Sheet

Waste-to-Energy is a Climate-Friendly, Renewable Energy Source

ASME White Paper on WTE as Renewable Energy