California's top energy, air quality, & recycling agencies support AB222

Environmentalists must stop letting the perfect become the enemy of the possible.
- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

For three years I have been writing about the frustrated attempts to get legislation passed through Sacramento that would enable the state's municipalities and utilities to permit diversion of municipal solid waste post-recyclables to conversion technologies that would recover energy, create biofuels and green chemicals, and reduce the volume of post-recyclables moving onto landfills by roughly 85%.

The anti-thermochemical stance of the legislation's detractors who preach that gasification "is just a more advanced form of incineration" has been the non-scientific excuse used most often to obstruct passage. In 2007 Assembly Natural Resources Committee (led by chairperson Loni Hancock of Berkeley, CA) derailed AB1090. The latest iteration of the bill (AB222 sponsored by Republican Anthony Adams and Democrat Fiona Ma) flew through the Assembly and received the support of the Utilities Committee of the Senate before it was two-yeared by the Senate's Environmental Quality Committee (which has now-Senator Loni Hancock on it). This in spite of the diverse and overwhelming support it has received throughout California.

AB222 will again be before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, probably before the Senate breaks in late Summer. There is much more reason for the Committee to stop their irrational obstruction of this bill. It now has a letter of support from the primary energy, air quality, and recycling agencies of the current administration. More background...

Update on Assembly Bill 222 (by today's Southern California Conversion Technology Demonstration Project Newsletter)

It is anticipated that Assembly Bill 222 (AB 222) will be heard in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee later this Summer, following budget negotiations.

AB 222 is California legislation designed to expedite the introduction of conversion technologies that will produce advanced biofuels and/or green power from carbon-based wastes. With Republican and Democrat co-authors, this legislation has gained bipartisan support amongst the business, environmental, labor, and government sectors. The legislation removes from statute a scientifically inaccurate definition of gasification, establishes a new regulatory category for a "biorefinery" and confirms that the biogenic portion of the municipal waste stream qualifies as a feedstock for renewable electricity under the Renewable Portfolio Standard.

Last Year, AB 222 passed the California State Assembly by a vote of 54-13, after having been approved by a unanimous bipartisan vote of 11-0 in the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. In July, it was approved in the Senate Utilities, Energy and Communications Committee. The Governor has endorsed the legislation, enabling the California Energy Commission to testify on its behalf, and there is significant support for the bill in the State Senate.

Key agency chairs sign letter of support

A letter of support from the executive branch is circulating among the Assembly and Senate leaders and their staffs. The signatories are no less than:

1. Jim Boyd, Chair of the California Energy Commission
2. Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board
3. Margo Reid Brown, Acting Director of CalRecycle (the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery)

Obstructing this carefully worded and negotiated legislation with this level of support would be a slap in the face of the primary agencies responsible for providing clean energy, clean air, and enlightened recycling processes to all Californians. Their reasons for support are clearly articulated in the letter:

AB222 would allow new non-incineration technologies to be used in the production of renewable biofuels, and electricity from biogenic material diverted from California's landfills. It would achieve this by removing current statutory restrictions that require thermal conversion projects to have zero emissions, a standard required of no other energy generation technology or manufacturing process in the State and one that effectively precludes any municipal solid waste (MSW) conversion technologies from qualifying for California's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). ...

New conversion technologies would assist California in developing local fuel sources as part of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) thereby making better use of resources and providing other benefits...

On February 4, 2010, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final rule for the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) allowing the biogenic portion of post-recycled MSW to qualify for the use in the production of advanced biofuels. The renewable fuel provisions of AB 222 would make California consistent with the EPA ruling. ...

This legislation is necessary for CalRecycle and local agencies to deploy the solutions they judge, after extremely careful analysis, the solutions they find appropriate, clean, and most affordable to meet AB32, the RPS, LCFS, and other mandates legislated in California.

Los Angeles County Moves Forward with Southern California Conversion Technology Project (From the CalRecycle Conversion Technology Listserv)

On April 20, 2010, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved recommendations from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works to initiate Phases III and IV of the Southern California Conversion Technology Project. Additionally, Supervisor Yaroslavsky introduced a motion that will expedite the County's efforts to identify locations in Los Angeles County for Phase IV of the project. Please click here to view the Board Agenda item.

After an extensive multi-year evaluation process, which included facility site visits, stakeholder meetings, and economic, environmental, and technical feasibility assessments, the Department of Public Works recommendation included:

1) Approval of Memorandums of Understanding between the County and three different project development teams

a. Arrow Ecology and Engineering & CR&R Incorporated ? proposing a 150 ton per day anaerobic digestion process in the City of Perris, to be located at the MRF/TS owned and operated by CR&R Incorporated.

b. International Environmental Solutions & Burrtec Waste Industries? proposing a 184 tons per day pyrolysis process in Unincorporated Riverside County, to be located at the MRF/TS owned and operated by Burrtec.

c. Entech Renewable Energy Solutions & Rainbow Disposal Company ? proposing a 360 tons per day gasification process in the City of Huntington Beach to be located at the MRF/TS owned and operated by Rainbow Disposal Company.

2) Approval of a four-year consultant contract with Alternative Resources Inc. to provide technical, permitting, and funding procurement assistance to each of the demonstration projects and to assist with the technology evaluation and development of Phase IV commercial projects within LA County.

For more information regarding conversion technologies and to view the County's reports please visit www.SoCalConversion.org

The agenda, which includes the official recommendations from the Department of Public Works, may be accessed by clicking here.

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technorati BIOblog, BIOwaste, bioenergy, biofuels, waste, landfill, legislation, California

Working together for MSW energy recovery

SCWMF meeting attendees (left to right): Dr. Kay Martin, Chip Clements, Coby Skye, Rick Brandes, Tobie Mitchell, and Jim Stewart (11/2009 by Scott Miller)

Last November the Southern California Waste Management Forum (SCWMF) met at its 38th annual meeting to discuss future directions for municipal solid waste management in the region. 2010 is an important year because time is running out before the 2013 closure of Southern California's largest landfill (Puente Hills). This is also the year that AB 222 will be reviewed by the Environmental Quality Committee before proceeding onto the California Senate floor for a vote. Without passage of AB 222 local municipalities will have fewer options for deploying regional solutions to the state's strict recycling and landfill diversion mandates.

Speaking eloquently on this occasion about the dichotomy of competing camps and the need for collaborative and regional decision-making was William ("Rick") Brandes from the U.S. EPA in Washington, DC. Rick has recently retired from his position as Chief of the Energy Recovery and Waste Disposal Branch, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery.

His presentation was titled "EPA and Energy Recovery from Wastes." He talked about the polarized stances that have formed over the energy recovery issue and the need for the two camps to come together. He pointed out that increasing climate change concerns have forced analysis of comprehensive mitigation strategies for which energy recovery is evolving as a major player. "Increased recycling and energy recovery provide significant greenhouse gas emissions savings," he asserted.

He pointed out that in Europe population density and lack of open land has convinced policymakers of the need to enable utilities to deploy energy recovery and centralized heating and power (CHP) systems. The emphasis there is on substituting waste-to-energy facilities for landfills. These facilities are situated within the communities they serve without toxic impacts on surrounding populations. In fact, as his graphic shows below, the countries with the most comprehensive recycling programs are also the ones that use incineration the most.

This logic seems to be an affront to some recycling and "zero waste" proponents who argue against energy recovery using thermochemical means no matter what the emissions profile is.

In this month's MSW Management magazine, Rick Brandes admonishes those who refuse to recognize that solutions are regional and require cooperative effort to achieve. Below are some excerpts from this article.

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March-April 2010
Cooperation, Not Conflict: Municipal Solid Waste Management in the 21st Century

By Rick Brandes

Having recently retired after 31 years working on waste management regulations and policy at the US Environmental Protection Agency, I’d like to voice a massive frustration on the state of municipal solid waste management policy in this country.

In one camp are the “zero wasters.” They see a world where real integrated materials management means all materials are contained in a continuous use/reuse cycle: organics to composting and soil enhancement, recyclables returned to use either in closed or open loop recycling systems, metals and glass back to new metals and new glass, and paper back into paper. They see the public as ready for a massive change to a more sustainable lifestyle, trashwise. And, incineration is viewed as the enemy of zero waste, not a complement.

In the other camp are the “energy recoverers.” They see a practical, realistic world, where real integrated materials management is driven by market forces, where recycling occurs when it makes market sense and energy is recovered from the bulk of the remainder of the non-recyclable municipal wastestream through mass-burn incineration or advanced thermochemical conversion. They see it as a decision on whether to landfill or recover energy, not whether to incinerate or recycle. They see the public as most likely to do what they are currently doing—and that doesn’t include a big change in lifestyle, trashwise.

It’s not like there are no alternative strategies. There are many, many ways to beneficially use this trash mountain of ours. Augment soil. Generate power. Make paper and save trees. Reduce bauxite mining. Recover even more metal out of the ash. Make park benches and roads. Produce ethanol and biodiesel. Use all alternatives where they make sense. Use different waste management strategies in different places. Do more of some of these things in some places and less of them in other places. But don’t editorially gun people down when they don’t do what you think they should do. Give communities the best available information, and they will probably do what is best for them. Let them make their trash more valuable.

About the only thing we can say right now is that there exists a massive lack of consensus on what constitutes an effective integrated materials management strategy. That has to change.

For the complete article, click here

I will be speaking about this and sustainable supplies of rural biomass during the Opening Session of the Waste-to-Fuels Conference in Jacksonville, FL April 18-20.

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technorati BIOwaste, bioenergy, biofuels, waste, pollution, urban, landfill, legislation, California