Local Activists Tell Congress: Protect Climate AND Health
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| 05.07.2009
As Congress considers the biggest global warming legislation to date, community health advocates are meeting with members of Congress in Washington, DC, this week to advocate for smart legislation that protects public health, the environment and the climate by not calling incineration “renewable energy.”
Washington, DC – As Congress considers the biggest global warming legislation to date, community health advocates are meeting with members of Congress in Washington, DC, this week to advocate for smart legislation that protects public health, the environment and the climate by not calling incineration “renewable energy.” These advocates from across the country are telling their elected officials that “Trash should not be treated as a renewable resource.”
Incineration is not climate friendly. The core destructive impacts of all types of incinerators are the same: Incinerators negatively impact public health, local economies, the climate and the environment. Giving federal subsidies to burn trash and biomass in incinerators to generate electricity obstructs far more sensible and effective strategies to conserve energy by reducing, recycling and composting the same materials.
As the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce considers the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” a little known component of clean energy legislation is gaining traction. Big polluters and the waste incineration industry want to call burning garbage, landfill gas and biomass “renewable energy,” and have incinerators as part of the Renewable Electricity Standard. But municipal solid waste incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced than coal-fired power plants and emit indirect greenhouse gases such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and others.
“Climate bills need to reduce greenhouse gases and protect community health,” Ananda Lee Tan of GAIA explained. “But adding incinerators to the renewable standard would not meet either of these goals. By constantly destroying resources, incineration drives a climate changing cycle that requires new resources to be pulled out of the earth, processed in factories, shipped around the world, and burned or buried in our communities.”
If waste is burned or buried rather than recycled, not only is there an environmental impact, there is an economic impact as well. “Although incinerators and landfills require a huge amount of capital investment, they offer relatively few jobs when compared to recycling,” said Brenda Platt of the Institute for Local Self Reliance. “Recycling sustains a minimum of 10 times more jobs per ton of waste than incineration or landfilling.”
On April 28, the only mass burn incinerator proposal in the country was suspended when county commissioners in Frederick County, Maryland, voted to stop a bidding process to build a new burner.
"At first, the idea of reducing our waste to ash and generating some electricity in the process sounded like a good idea to some. But as they learned more about the details over time - including the immense cost, the decades-long commitment, the financial risks, the environmental impacts and the real alternatives - public opposition became overwhelming,” said Kai Hagen, one of five county commissioners in Frederick County. "Now it is our job to harness the power and creativity of our energized citizens to be part of a growing number of communities who are modeling a far more responsible and sustainable approach to managing our resources."
No new incinerators have been built in over a decade, and some of the existing 87 municipal waste incinerators across the country are on the verge of closing permanently--as is the incinerator in Charleston, SC--or are facing severe financial difficulties, such as the incinerator in Harrisburg, PA. While incinerator companies claim to create “renewable” energy generation from waste, incinerators are actually energy wasters. Incinerators inefficiently capture small amounts of energy by destroying large amounts of reusable materials—wasting 50% more energy than recycling conserves.
Community advocates are also urging Congress to keep landfill gas and biomass from qualifying as renewable energy in the RES or any other subsidy—especially any qualifications for existing facilities.
Landfills are a leading man-made source of methane, which does greater climate damage than CO2 in the short term, 72 times more over a 20-year period. “We need to stop these toxic technologies and achieve stronger pollution regulations, not create more dirty subsidies. EPA figures show that landfilling one ton of organic materials, even with landfill gas to energy, releases 400% more greenhouse gas emissions than composting that material,” said Amy Wilson of Energy Justice Network.
“We’re here telling Congress that incentivizing biomass will lead to a massive increase in forest cutting, producing a spike in carbon emissions,” said Mary Booth, Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance. “We can’t re-sequester the carbon released by burning biomass or by deforestation fast enough to meet our climate goals.”
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