Waste-to-Energy: Air Pollution Renewable in Decline

By Kennedy Maize -- June 26, 2019

“Waste-to-energy had a 15-year heyday, driven in part by the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). The law essentially created the non-utility generating industry.”
“Many local governments had long incinerated garbage to reduce volumes flowing to landfills, but that provoked public opposition due to air pollution. With PURPA, developers began seeing a way to incinerate garbage in a technologically and environmentally sound fashion, generate electricity, and use the new law to force electric utilities to, reluctantly, buy the output.”

Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants turn the combustible content of waste to energy, capturing and recycling metals and other noncombustible waste. The biomass (“biogenic”) component—aka garbage—is made up of paper, cardboard, food waste, grass clippings, leaves, wood, and leather. Non-biogenic waste is composed of plastics, metals, and petroleum-based materials.

According to the the U.S.…

Utility ‘Demand Side Management’ Programs: Time to Go Voluntary (RSM brief to Georgia PSC)

By Jim Clarkson -- June 25, 2019

Editor Note: Captive customers of franchised, monopolistic utilities should decide for themselves whether or not to participate in so-called demand-side management (energy conservation) programs. Jim Clarkson of Resource Supply Management Company filed testimony to this effect as part of Georgia Power Company’s 2019 Integrated Resource Plan.

Comes now, Resource Supply Management and shows the Commission that participation in Georgia Power’s Demand Side Measures (“DSM”) programs should be voluntary:

One way to provide a little relief to ratepayers from the cost of Vogtle is to allow customers to op-out of Demand Side Measures instituted by Georgia Power and approved by the Public Service Commission along with the associated surcharges on customer bills. These energy efficiency programs are supposed to reduce customer use of electricity, which is the last thing Georgia Power needs to do in their current situation.

CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (a market niche)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 24, 2019

“The CO₂ helps unlock and recover crude oil from mature oil fields and residual oil zones. We use a good portion of this CO₂ in our own EOR projects….” (Kinder-Morgan)
“Many climate activists will have nothing to do with CCS because of its prominent/dominant role in enhanced oil recovery. But here is the Carbon Capture Coalition, with a green eye shade, promoting the very technology to increase American Energy Dominance.” (below)

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a new realm of rent-seeking in the all-things-climate debate. The Carbon Capture Coalition (a revamp of the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative) describes itself as “a nonpartisan coalition supporting the deployment and adoption of carbon capture technology … to foster domestic energy production, support jobs and reduce emissions, all at the same time.”…