Hazardous Waste is Not Clean, Renewable Energy

- by Lisa Woz­ni­ak, June 2, 2014, Lans­ing News

Peo­ple in pol­i­tics tell a lot of “suc­cess” sto­ries, but one that can be sub­stan­ti­at­ed is the rise of clean, renew­able ener­gy in Michi­gan. Thanks to a law passed with bipar­ti­san sup­port in 2008, Michi­gan has been chal­lenged to gen­er­ate 10 per­cent of its ener­gy from renew­able sources like wind, solar, or water by 2015. We are cur­rent­ly on track to meet or exceed that goal, which has result­ed in job cre­ation, cost reduc­tions, and clean­er air and water.

Despite a track record of suc­cess, how­ev­er, efforts to increase the use of clean renew­able ener­gy in Michi­gan are under attack. Besides a loom­ing expi­ra­tion date of 2015 on our clean ener­gy goals, state leg­is­la­tors want to rewrite the def­i­n­i­tion of renew­able ener­gy to include some of the dirt­i­est, most haz­ardous sub­stances gen­er­at­ed by oil refiner­ies and coal plants. They want us to con­sid­er haz­ardous waste and petro­le­um byprod­ucts clean, renew­able energy.

Michi­gan cur­rent­ly defines a renew­able ener­gy resource as ener­gy that is ulti­mate­ly derived from solar pow­er, water pow­er or wind pow­er, and is nat­u­ral­ly replen­ished over a human time frame. This is a def­i­n­i­tion based on sci­ence, not on polit­i­cal inter­ests. But right now a bill is mak­ing its way through the Michi­gan House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that would gut the exist­ing def­i­n­i­tion and allow burn­ing indus­tri­al waste and petro­le­um byprod­ucts to clas­si­fy as renew­able energy.

This attack on clean ener­gy is espe­cial­ly glar­ing giv­en the recent con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing petro­le­um coke stor­age in Detroit. Last year, four-sto­ry high piles of pet­coke plumed black clouds of tox­ic dust over the Detroit Riv­er, pol­lut­ing sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and our Great Lakes. Unbe­liev­able as it may seem, if this bill pass­es, burn­ing pet­coke – the dirt­i­est byprod­uct of the oil refin­ing process – would qual­i­fy as clean, renew­able energy.

Incin­er­at­ing haz­ardous waste and call­ing it clean is down­right inde­fen­si­ble. The incin­er­a­tion process emits car­cino­genic tox­ins and harm­ful air pol­lu­tion that put the health of Michi­gan­ders and our air and water on the line. Per a 2009 study com­mis­sioned by the Michi­gan Envi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil, pol­lu­tion from exist­ing coal plants already cost Michi­gan res­i­dents more than $1 bil­lion annu­al­ly in health care costs and dam­ages. We sim­ply can­not afford to incen­tivize incin­er­a­tion of haz­ardous waste. We can­not allow Michi­gan leg­is­la­tors to ger­ry­man­der a def­i­n­i­tion of clean, renew­able ener­gy to make room for more pollution.

If House Bill 5205 pass­es, we need only look at some of our urban cen­ters to see what the future has in store. Detroit res­i­dents can tell you first­hand the con­se­quences of liv­ing in the shad­ow of the world’s largest munic­i­pal waste incin­er­a­tor. One of the worst pol­luters in Wayne Coun­ty, the incin­er­a­tor burns an esti­mat­ed 2,800 tons of waste everyday.

Emis­sions from the incin­er­a­tor con­tain tox­ins like nitro­gen oxides, car­bon monox­ide, and lead — all of which have con­tributed to the city’s abnor­mal­ly high rates of asth­ma and oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry illnesses.

Michi­gan deserves lead­er­ship and leg­is­la­tion that fos­ters real renew­able ener­gy sources, like wind and solar, not dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy that encour­ages the devel­op­ment of dirty, pol­lut­ing sources by mas­querad­ing them as renew­ables. State leg­is­la­tors should to stop wast­ing time on House Bill 5205 and to get to work pass­ing a stronger clean, renew­able ener­gy stan­dard that retains the cur­rent, legit­i­mate def­i­n­i­tion of renew­able ener­gy. Now, that’d be a suc­cess sto­ry worth telling.

Lisa Woz­ni­ak is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for the Michi­gan League of Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, a non-par­ti­san polit­i­cal voice for Michigan’s land, air and water. Fol­low Michi­gan LCV on Face­book or Twit­ter.