After over a decade of dormancy, the waste-to-energy industry in the United States is getting a boost. President Bush spoke of "reducing gasoline consumption by 20% over the next ten years", and biofuels are one way to attain that goal. Washington is providing some funds to producers of cellulosic ethanol, as the only way to really go forward with biofuels is to get away from the use of corn, and towards the use of cellulose-based plant materials and waste products.
Instead of municipal waste incineration plants, these newer waste-to-energy facilities will chemically convert waste materials into alcohol to be used as a transportation fuel. Incinerators, while a mature and relatively simple technology, produce electricity and district heating - something that we can produce using renewable, nuclear, or co2al energy.
Incineration is not out of the equation, however. Incineration of poultry litter for the production of electricity is also being proposed. Anaerobic digestion is another technology which is gaining use by farmers of cattle and swine for disposal of the manure. The use of municipal waste as fuel is still attractive because the WTE facilities can be built in urban areas where demand for district heating exists and waste would otherwise be hauled for long distances to landfills. District heating can be converted to district cooling using absorbtion chillers - taking air conditioning strain off of the power grid. An incinerator burning 1000 tons of post-recycling, post-source reduction waste per day can produce about 25 MW of electricity and 100 MW of district heating.
» Read Article at Dow Jones MarketWatch: Energy Producers take another look at trash
