Waste Management Inc., North America’s largest garbage hauler, says trash gets no respect from President Barack Obama and the “green energy” crowd.
Waste Management, Republic Services Inc. and Covanta Holding Corp. say their success producing power from landfills and waste incinerators is being ignored as the U.S. doles out $60 billion in energy grants and tax breaks from Obama’s economic stimulus. The companies say they may also be shortchanged as Congress develops long-term rewards for alternative fuels.
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“We’ve become the unseen renewable energy source that no one pays attention to,” Waste Management Chief Executive Officer David Steiner said in an interview. “Why not help us? We are underrepresented because we are the garbage guys.”
The garbage-hauling industry hasn’t been among the top lobbyists in Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks spending aimed at shaping policy. Waste management companies spent $4.6 million lobbying last year, compared with $32.5 million by alternative-energy groups.
Obama has called for an 11-fold increase in the use of renewable power. The waste industry produces energy by incinerating solid waste to produce steam that drives a turbine, and by capturing the gas methane from garbage decomposing in landfills.
Nothing in the federal stimulus legislation bars spending on trash-to-energy projects, according to Jeffrey Genzer, an attorney for the National Association of State Energy Officials in Alexandria. States are opting for energy-efficiency projects instead because waste proposals require time-consuming environmental reviews, Genzer said.
Nationally, 450 landfills and 87 incinerators produced about 24 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2007, about two-thirds the contribution of wind energy and more than 35 times solar’s contribution.
Waste Management is in talks to build waste-to-energy plants in China and Europe, where governments are more willing than the U.S. to make garbage power part of their green energy policies, Steiner said.
Climate change legislation proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., would count methane from landfills but not power from trash incineration toward requirements for the use of renewable energy. A group of House Democrats led by Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia has urged including both.
“There’s still a stigma attached to landfills and landfill gas,” said Bill Held, Republic’s senior director of renewable energy.
