WastedEnergy

So, mainstream media, where you been?  It’s time to get that funky stuff out the dungeon…and by that, I mean trash, of course.  Anyway, here is my Song for The Man: we need to do more to take advantage of America’s own energy source.  Everyone knows how much we love to consume, and now that you’ve got what you want, you want more.  So how do we get more?  By burning the rest, of course…

The Reciprocating Grate: nobody can do it like Mixmaster can!

I say, it’s time we start Disco Breakin’ from the habit of piling up our solid waste in landfills, which, while less polluting than they were a few decades ago, still do release a fair bit of methane and can get expensive once local capacity is used up and we start making The Move to long hauling waste to remote landfills.  And while this energy source may not be crazy sniffable, it is more reliable for base loading power generation, not to mention industrial process and residential and business district heating (and cooling) than those ill peripherals, wind and solar energy.  Unlike intermittent energy sources, which require some form of backup generating capacity or energy storage, increasing the costs of power generation and technical challenges of system reliability, this one is a Sure Shot.  Now, I don’t mean to suggest that other renewables aren’t useful too, but base loading renewables?  Those are a rare breed…and what could be more reliable than trash?  It’s a good way to Electrify the grid, and what more could you really want?

For those who are not quite comfortable with the idea of burning trash, let me introduce you to the Subsurface Landfill Fire.  Unlike a waste-to-energy plant, a landfill comes with only a cover layer of soil to filter fumes from burning garbage, and not a whole lot else.  Inhale this stuff, and it might be a long time before you’re Sneaking Out the Hospital.  And try as we might, it’s not always possible to keep every hot load out of landfills: people have a Nasty habit of tossing out their lit cigarette butts, hot grill charcoals, and other still-burning wastes together with the other combustibles, and it is often just a matter of time before some of that ends up in a landfill.  Once a subsurface fire starts, it can spread quickly and becomes expensive and difficult to manage, much more so than a fire in a WTE waste storage bunker that can be handled by the facility’s emergency sprinkler systems.  In fact, these fires can burn for years or even decades at a time.  So WTE haters, let’s try to negotiate, shall we?  Don’t make me put shame in your game…

Landfill Fires: we be gettin’ stupid in your area…

So here I am with the master plan: let’s invest in this clean energy infrastructure, which produces more substantial offsets of climate change pollution emissions than any other energy source per megawatt of installed capacity, which has a capacity factor as high as 95%, and which produces an order of magnitude more useful energy than the next best method of handling trash.

Trash Combustion: tell me party people, is that so wrong? 

And unlike White Castle fries, they come in more than one size:

Olmsted County, MN WTE Expansion under construction: whether it’s 200 tons per day or 3,000, combustion can keep your Body Movin’!