Trash power grew in 2015, with Florida continuing its reign as the state with the most electricity coming from garbage, according to the federal government.
The Sunshine State generates about one-fifth of the U.S. electricity powered by items many people would consider trash, according to an Energy Information Administration report released Friday. The country has 71 waste-to-energy plants in 20 states.
Waste-to-energy plants take combustible materials such as paper, cardboard, food waste, grass clippings, leaves, wood, leather products as well as plastic, metals and petroleum-based synthetic materials and convert them into energy, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department’s independent analysis arm.
While Florida leads the way, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts are also on the forefront of the drive to convert waste into energy.
Those five states make up 61 percent of the waste-to-energy power plant capacity in the country and, in 2015, they produced 64 percent of the country’s waste-to-energy electricity.
In 2015, waste-to-energy plants burned about 29 million tons worth of trash. About 26 million tons of went toward electricity production, according to the administration. The rest was recycled, composed or put into a landfill, the report stated.
All of that trash burned for energy represents a tiny portion of the total trash generated by the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent estimates, the U.S. generated about 254 million tons of waste in 2013, the last year statistics were available.
While waste-to-energy plants make up just a sliver of the United States’ electricity mix — less than half a percent of the total national electricity generation in 2015 — electricity production isn’t the whole goal, according to the federal government.
“(Waste-to-energy) plants are primarily intended as a (trash) management option, with electricity generation a secondary benefit,” the Energy Information Administration reported. “Burning (trash) reduces the volume of waste by about 87 percent. The remainder is ash from air pollutant emissions control systems, ash from the combusted material, and noncombustible materials.”
While a new waste-to-energy plant was recently built in Palm Beach, Fla., most of the plants in the country are decades old.
Ninety percent of the electric capacity generated by trash was built between 1980 and 1995. That was mainly due to the increased costs of filling landfills.
In later years, many plants were found to be contributing to air pollution. The burning of combustible waste sent mercury and dioxin emissions into the air and required new air pollution control systems to be installed, according to the administration.
“The construction of new [municipal solid waste]-fired electric generation capacity came to a halt,” the administration wrote.
