Thursday, July 15, 2010

Issues and obstacles to the implementation of Waste-to-Energy in the United States

Waste-to-energy (WTE) is the incineration of waste with the recovery of energy in the form of electricity and/or heat. There has been enormous technological development of WTE since the eighties, especially with regard to the Air Pollution Control systems used in modern WTEs. In the environmental impact hierarchy of waste management, WTE has taken its place under recycling and above landfilling. Numerous studies have been done that show WTE’s superiority over disposal in landfills in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and environmental impact. Landfills emitted about 126 Teragrams (1 Teragram is 1012 grams or one million metric tons) of CO2 equivalents in 2008 and are the second biggest emitter of methane in the country (first place goes to cow dung).