Waste Incineration (a.k.a. “Waste-to-Energy”)

Our Pub­li­ca­tions:

• New report: Beyond Incin­er­a­tion: Best Waste Man­age­ment Strate­gies for Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Mary­land (March 2021) — debunks incin­er­a­tor indus­try claims, and pro­vides analy­sis show­ing incin­er­a­tion is worse than landfilling
• Incin­er­a­tion pow­er­point presentation
• Fact­sheets:
  • Trash Incin­er­a­tion Factsheet
  • Incin­er­a­tor Clo­sures 2000–2024
  • Trash Incin­er­a­tion and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism
  • Are land­fills worse than incin­er­a­tors for the climate?
  • Life Cycle Analy­sis of Incin­er­a­tion vs. Landfilling
  • Land­fills are bad, but incin­er­a­tors (with ash land­fill­ing) are worse.
  • Incin­er­a­tor Health Stud­ies (a response to Cov­an­ta’s fly­er claim­ing that health stud­ies find no impacts)
  • Fact check on incin­er­a­tor emis­sions (a response to Cov­an­ta’s Ener­gy-from-Waste Emis­sion fly­er)
  • Incin­er­a­tor ash tox­i­c­i­ty vs. NY soil cleanup standards
  • Incin­er­a­tor ash test­ing designed to make it “non-haz­ardous”
  • Tox­ic haz­ards of con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion waste incineration

Incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to make ener­gy or to man­age waste. It pro­duces the fewest jobs com­pared to reuse, recy­cling and com­post­ing the same mate­ri­als. It is the dirt­i­est way to man­age waste — far more pol­lut­ing than land­fills. It is also the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce ener­gy — far more pol­lut­ing than coal burning.

Most expen­sive way to man­age waste

Accord­ing to the waste indus­try itself, incin­er­a­tion has always been more expen­sive than land­fills. They are inher­ent­ly more com­pli­cat­ed to oper­ate and the cost gap increas­es over time as the enor­mous expense of pol­lu­tion con­trols keeps incin­er­a­tors expen­sive as air reg­u­la­tions grad­u­al­ly tight­en. The cost of the 1,500 ton/day incin­er­a­tor pro­posed for Fred­er­ick, MD (defeat­ed in Nov 2014) climbed over $500 mil­lion — actu­al­ly around $1 bil­lion, includ­ing the inter­est on the bonds. A strong zero waste pro­gram could be devel­oped for a frac­tion of the cost, divert­ing at least as much waste from land­fills, as incin­er­a­tors only reduce the ton­nage going to land­fills by 70% (about 90% by vol­ume). Read more…

Most expen­sive way to make energy

Trash incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive way to make ener­gy, even though they get paid to take their fuel. This is true for the cost to build incin­er­a­tors as well as the cost to oper­ate and main­tain them. Incin­er­a­tion is 2.7 times as expen­sive than coal to build and 11 times as expen­sive to oper­ate and main­tain. Nuclear pow­er is one of the most expen­sive forms of ener­gy and trash incin­er­a­tion is still 1.5 times as expen­sive to build and 4.2 times as expen­sive to oper­ate and main­tain than nuclear. This is accord­ing to the lat­est (April 2013) analy­sis done for the Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion. Read more…

Incin­er­a­tion is not “waste-to-ener­gy”

Waste-to-Ener­gy is a PR term. Trash-to-steam is also a lie (there is more in trash than water, thus more in incin­er­a­tor pol­lu­tion than water vapor). The real­i­ty is that incin­er­a­tors waste 3–5 times more ener­gy than they recov­er, if you com­pare the ener­gy pro­duced through incin­er­a­tion to the embod­ied ener­gy lost by not recy­cling and com­post­ing those mate­ri­als, which must then be pro­duced again from raw resources. Read more…

Num­ber of Com­mer­cial Trash Incin­er­a­tors Oper­at­ing in the U.S.

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Gen­er­al resources against incineration:

• The Health Effects of Waste Incin­er­a­tors: 4th Report of the British Soci­ety for Eco­log­i­cal Med­i­cine (June 2008) [relat­ed doc­u­ments here]
• Waste Not newslet­ter archive (chron­i­cles 1990s U.S. grass­roots move­ment against trash incinerators)

U.S. Trash Incin­er­a­tor Lists and Maps

• List of Oper­at­ing Com­mer­cial Trash Incin­er­a­tors in the U.S. by size
• Hand-drawn maps by John van der Harst (2001)
  • U.S. Map (2001)
  • East­ern U.S. Map (clos­er up)
• Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work Map­ping Project: 
  • Oper­at­ing U.S. Trash Incinerators
  • Map­ping Project Home
    (enter your zip code or use nation­al or glob­al maps or search fea­tures to find var­i­ous types of incinerators)

Incin­er­a­tor-relat­ed issues:

• Diox­in homepage
  • Met­als as Cat­a­lysts for Diox­in Formation
  • Elec­tro­sta­t­ic Pre­cip­i­ta­tors Breed Dioxins
• Con­tin­u­ous Emis­sions Mon­i­tors (CEMs)

Flu­idized Bed Com­bus­tors (FBCs)

• Waste Coal Burn­ers (which use FBCs)
• Sum­ma­ry of Stud­ies on Emis­sions of Poly­cyclic Aro­mat­ic Hydro­car­bons (PAHs) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Car­bon Monox­ide (CO) from Waste Coal Flu­idized Bed Com­bus­tors (FBCs)
• Waste Coal Burn­er Pow­er­point Presentation
• Tire incin­er­a­tion in flu­idized bed boilers

Incin­er­a­tors-in-Dis­guise (Gasi­fi­ca­tion / Plas­ma / Pyrolysis):

• GAIA Pub­li­ca­tions:
  • Waste Gasi­fi­ca­tion & Pyrol­y­sis: High Risk, Low Yield Process­es for Waste Man­age­ment (March 2017)
  • An Indus­try Blow­ing Smoke: 10 Rea­sons Why Gasi­fi­ca­tion, Pyrol­y­sis & Plas­ma Incin­er­a­tion are Not “Green Solu­tions” (June 2009)
  • Gasi­fi­ca­tion, Pyrol­y­sis, Plas­ma Arc: False Solu­tions to Plas­tic Pollution
• Incin­er­a­tors-in-Dis­guise Pow­er­point (Green­ac­tion, Aug 2014)
  
• Waste Con­ver­sion Tech­nolo­gies: Emer­gence of a New Option or the Same Old Sto­ry? (2007 report for New York State sol­id waste indus­try, explain­ing plas­ma and gasi­fi­ca­tion process­es, their pit­falls and lists of exist­ing facil­i­ties in the world)

• Waste Gasi­fi­ca­tion: Impacts on the Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Health (Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League, 2009 report on Pyrol­y­sis and Gasification)
• Pyrol­y­sis and Ther­mal Gasi­fi­ca­tion of Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste (Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League, 2002)

Gasi­fi­ca­tion

• “Litany of Gasi­fi­ca­tion Fail­ures” (2016 com­pi­la­tion by UK With­out Incin­er­a­tion Net­work)
• Eval­u­a­tion of Emis­sions from Ther­mal Con­ver­sion Tech­nolo­gies Pro­cess­ing Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste and Bio­mass [direct link] (2009 report by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at River­side for the BioEn­er­gy Pro­duc­ers Asso­ci­a­tion; includes glob­al list of gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ties at end of report)
• Com­ments on the pro­posed mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Mass­a­chu­setts Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Plan to lift the mora­to­ri­um on sol­id waste incin­er­a­tion and allow devel­op­ment of gasi­fi­ca­tion pow­er plants, Part­ner­ship for Pol­i­cy Integrity
• Coal Gasi­fi­ca­tion / IGCC
• Poor Track Record of Trash Gasi­fi­ca­tion Plants (Sept 2002 letter)
• Trash Gasi­fi­ca­tion Emis­sions (April 2002 letter)

• EPA Report: Gasi­fi­er Ash Con­t­a­m­i­nates Ground Water
  One myth around the sol­id wastes pro­duced by gasi­fi­ca­tion is that they are a glass-like “slag” that nev­er leach­es. Of course, even con­ven­tion­al trash incin­er­a­tors pre­tend that their high­ly tox­ic and leach­able ash nev­er leach­es. With gasi­fi­ca­tion sys­tems, they still pro­duce ash that can leach tox­ic chem­i­cals into the ground­wa­ter where it is dumped. Unlike con­ven­tion­al incin­er­a­tor ash (which most­ly goes to land­fills), gasi­fi­ca­tion pro­mot­ers often claim that they’ll sell their “slag” as build­ing mate­r­i­al, soil amend­ment or aggre­gate. The ash is still full of tox­ic met­als, halo­gens and radioac­tive ele­ments that were present in the waste and which can’t be destroyed. Data from coal gasi­fi­ca­tion slag pro­duced in a coal gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty in North Dako­ta shows seri­ous ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from leach­ing and is not­ed in this EPA report on ground­wa­ter “dam­age cas­es” from ash/slag dis­pos­al sites. See pages 82–83.

Plas­ma Arc

• “A Reg­u­la­to­ry Overview of Plas­ma Tech­nol­o­gy: Report of the Plas­ma Tech­nol­o­gy Sub­group Inter­state Tech­nol­o­gy and Reg­u­la­to­ry Coop­er­a­tion Work Group” (June 1996)
  

Pyrol­y­sis

• Video explain­ing real­i­ty of Pyrolyz­er, LLC’s pyrol­y­sis pro­pos­al for Logans­port, IN (orig­i­nal Prezi pre­sen­ta­tion shown in video is here)

Cel­lu­losic Ethanol, Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Coal-to-Liq­uids, Ther­mal Depoly­mer­iza­tion and Waste-to-Fuels:

• For many of these alter­na­tive types of incin­er­a­tors and con­ver­sion process­es (waste-to-fuels), see some of the basic argu­ments forth in our alter­na­tive fuels fact­sheet.

Tire Incin­er­a­tion:

• Tire Incin­er­a­tion

Bio­mass and Land­fill gas:

• Bio­mass Incineration

Cement Kilns:

• Burn­ing of haz­ardous waste and tires in cement kilns

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Incin­er­a­tion Definitions

The indus­try tries hard to pre­tend that plas­ma, gasi­fi­ca­tion and pyrol­y­sis are not forms of incin­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, the Euro­pean Union and the Unit­ed States have defined all these tech­nolo­gies as forms of incin­er­a­tion (empha­sis added).

The Euro­pean Union defines incin­er­a­tors as follows:

‘incin­er­a­tion plant’ means any sta­tion­ary or mobile tech­ni­cal unit and equip­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the ther­mal treat­ment of wastes with or with­out recov­ery of the com­bus­tion heat gen­er­at­ed. This includes the incin­er­a­tion by oxi­da­tion of waste as well as oth­er ther­mal treat­ment process­es such as pyrol­y­sis, gasi­fi­ca­tion or plas­ma process­es in so far as the sub­stances result­ing from the treat­ment are sub­se­quent­ly incinerated. 

This def­i­n­i­tion cov­ers the site and the entire incin­er­a­tion plant includ­ing all incin­er­a­tion lines, waste recep­tion, stor­age, on site pre­treat­ment facil­i­ties, waste-fuel and air-sup­ply sys­tems, boil­er, facil­i­ties for the treat­ment of exhaust gas­es, on-site facil­i­ties for treat­ment or stor­age of residues and waste water, stack, devices and sys­tems for con­trol­ling incin­er­a­tion oper­a­tions, record­ing and mon­i­tor­ing incin­er­a­tion conditions; 

‘co-incin­er­a­tion plant’ means any sta­tion­ary or mobile plant whose main pur­pose is the gen­er­a­tion of ener­gy or pro­duc­tion of mate­r­i­al prod­ucts and: — which uses wastes as a reg­u­lar or addi­tion­al fuel; or — in which waste is ther­mal­ly treat­ed for the pur­pose of disposal. 

Arti­cle 3 of Direc­tive 2000/76/EC of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and the Coun­cil of 4 on the incin­er­a­tion of waste (see page 4) 

For more info on the EU’s Waste Incin­er­a­tion Direc­tive, see the UK Envi­ron­ment Agen­cy’s web­site on waste incineration.

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In the Unit­ed States, the def­i­n­i­tion of “munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor” (trash incin­er­a­tor) includes gasi­fi­ca­tion and pyrolysis:

In Feb 11, 1991, U.S. EPA pub­lished reg­u­la­tions in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter (56 FR 5488) that state:

Munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor or MWC or MWC unit means any device that com­busts, sol­id, liq­uid, or gasi­fied MSW includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, field-erect­ed incin­er­a­tors (with or with­out heat recov­ery), mod­u­lar incin­er­a­tors (starved air or excess air), boil­ers (i.e., steam gen­er­at­ing units), fur­naces (whether sus­pen­sion-fired, grate-fired, mass-fired, or flu­idized bed-fired) and gasification/combustion units. This does not include com­bus­tion units, engines, or oth­er devices that com­bust land­fill gas­es col­lect­ed by land­fill gas col­lec­tion systems.

[MSW = Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste (house­hold and com­mer­cial trash)]

This reg­u­la­tion (40 CFR 60.51a) was lat­er revised on Dec. 19, 1995 to include pyrol­y­sis, mak­ing gasi­fi­ca­tion part of a new pyrol­y­sis definition:

Munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor, MWC, or munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor unit: (1) Means any set­ting or equip­ment that com­busts sol­id, liq­uid, or gasi­fied MSW includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, field-erect­ed incin­er­a­tors (with or with­out heat recov­ery), mod­u­lar incin­er­a­tors (starved-air or excess-air), boil­ers (i.e., steam-gen­er­at­ing units), fur­naces (whether sus­pen­sion-fired, grate-fired, mass-fired, air cur­tain incin­er­a­tors, or flu­idized bed-fired), and pyrolysis/combustion units. Munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tors do not include pyrolysis/combustion units locat­ed at plastics/ rub­ber recy­cling units (as spec­i­fied in § 60.50a(k) of this sec­tion). Munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tors do not include inter­nal com­bus­tion engines, gas tur­bines, or oth­er com­bus­tion devices that com­bust land­fill gas­es col­lect­ed by land­fill gas col­lec­tion systems.

Pyrolysis/combustion unit means a unit that pro­duces gas­es, liq­uids, or solids through the heat­ing of MSW, and the gas­es, liq­uids, or solids pro­duced are com­bust­ed and emis­sions vent­ed to the atmosphere.

If there is any doubt that a “munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor” is an incin­er­a­tor, the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency clear­ly states that they’re the same thing: “A munic­i­pal waste incin­er­a­tor ‘com­busts’ sol­id waste and thus is func­tion­al­ly syn­ony­mous with munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tor.” See: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/nsr/gen/rm_2.html

Regard­ing land­fill gas burn­ers: while not reg­u­lat­ed as “munic­i­pal waste com­bus­tors,” land­fill gas burn­ers have also been referred to as incin­er­a­tors by those in the indus­try, the trade press, coun­ty waste facil­i­ty man­agers, and the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Also, U.S. EPA Haz­ardous Waste Reg­u­la­tions (40 CFR 260.10) also state that plas­ma arc is an incin­er­a­tion technology:

Incin­er­a­tor means any enclosed device that:

(2) Meets the def­i­n­i­tion of infrared incin­er­a­tor or plas­ma arc incin­er­a­tor.

Infrared incin­er­a­tor means any enclosed device that uses elec­tric pow­ered resis­tance heaters as a source of radi­ant heat fol­lowed by an after­burn­er using con­trolled flame com­bus­tion and which is not list­ed as an indus­tri­al furnace.

Plas­ma arc incin­er­a­tor means any enclosed device using a high inten­si­ty elec­tri­cal dis­charge or arc as a source of heat fol­lowed by an after­burn­er using con­trolled flame com­bus­tion and which is not list­ed as an indus­tri­al furnace.

Indus­tri­al fur­nace means any of the fol­low­ing enclosed devices that are inte­gral com­po­nents of man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es and that use ther­mal treat­ment to accom­plish recov­ery of mate­ri­als or energy:

 

(1) Cement kilns
(2) Lime kilns
(3) Aggre­gate kilns
(4) Phos­phate kilns
(5) Coke ovens
(6) Blast fur­naces
(7) Smelt­ing, melt­ing and refin­ing fur­naces (includ­ing pyromet­al­lur­gi­cal devices such as cupo­las, rever­ber­a­tor fur­naces, sin­ter­ing machine, roast­ers, and foundry fur­naces)
(8) Tita­ni­um diox­ide chlo­ride process oxi­da­tion reac­tors
(9) Methane reform­ing fur­naces
(10) Pulp­ing liquor recov­ery fur­naces
(11) Com­bus­tion devices used in the recov­ery of sul­fur val­ues from spent sul­fu­ric acid
(12) Halo­gen acid fur­naces (HAFs) for the pro­duc­tion of acid from halo­genat­ed haz­ardous waste gen­er­at­ed by chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties where the fur­nace is locat­ed on the site of a chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty, the acid prod­uct has a halo­gen acid con­tent of at least 3%, the acid prod­uct is used in a man­u­fac­tur­ing process, and, except for haz­ardous waste burned as fuel, haz­ardous waste fed to the fur­nace has a min­i­mum halo­gen con­tent of 20% as-gen­er­at­ed.
(13) Such oth­er devices as the Admin­is­tra­tor may, after notice and com­ment, add to this list on the basis of one or more of the fol­low­ing factors: