Garbage as Energy Commodity? Industry Booms in Europe

Oslo, Norway is known for many different characteristics; being Norway’s government capital, for one, along with being the economic hub for trade and home to over 1.4 million citizens.  One thing most people don’t know about Oslo however, is how much they really want your garbage.

“I’d like to take some [garbage] from the United States…sea transport is cheap,” said Pal Mikkelsen, mechanical engineer and managing director of Oslo’s waste-to-energy agency.

Sound a little weird?

It’s really not as bizarre as it seems.  Norway, along with many other northern European countries, has built a network of cogeneration plants that produce heat and electricity from recycled waste.  Referred to as waste-to-energy facilities, the process is relatively simple.  Garbage is burned in a portion of the facility, creating steam, ash and flue gases.  The facility collects the steam and uses it to turn turbines, which generates the electricity used throughout much of the country.  The ash is trucked away to a landfill, while the remaining gases are either filtered and dispersed into the atmosphere, or collected and used for additional products like biofuel.

Below is a great visual example of how a garbage burning plant processes waste.  (via industrytap.com)

‘It’s a commodity’

And this is no rinky-dink side project that spits out a few megawatts and creates some strong PR.  No, the Oslo waste-to-energy projects mean business, literally.

”There’s a European waste market – it’s a commodity,” states Hege Rooth Olbergsveen, senior advisor for the program.  Mikkelsen concurs, “Northern Europe has a huge generating capacity.”

This process of generating power, along with the prevalence of factories within the region, is quite common.  Many other northern European countries have done the same for decades, which has actually spurred competition within Scandinavia.  Stockholm, Sweden, for one, has lured several municipalities to truck in an abundance of waste from many locations, including Norway, for their benefit.

Collectively, Oslo residents rely on over 400 incineration facilities in the region for many elements of their daily lives.  For one, half of their residential heat and energy needs come from a consistent supply of waste-to-energy plant output.  They heat most of their local schools using the same energy.  And even the city’s Metro bus system relies on recycled gas fumes from the facilities to create the biofuel they use, increasing energy efficiency between seventy-five to one hundred percent.  As odd as it may sound from an American perspective, the necessity of collecting waste to thrive in Norway is as vital as ever.

Even after importing garbage from countries like England, Ireland and Sweden, the agency operates at a fraction of its incinerating capacity, according to Mikkelsen.  Despite receiving over 150 million tons of waste to process every year, their factories are able to handle upwards of 700 million tons.

US Potential to Participate Overseas

The prospect of bringing in garbage from the United States is still an option, but stumbling blocks remain in the process.  In Norway, the garbage industry is highly organized and technologically savvy; free garbage bags are offered at local grocery stores and they’re color-coded depending on what’s being discarded.  Blue bags denote plastic materials, green bags are for food waste and other recyclable materials are disposed elsewhere.

Conversely, a sizable portion of American garbage is considerably less organized, which could pose an additional environmental hazard for the incineration process, as well as potential complications that could arise from either sorting through the garbage or choosing to burn it as is and wasting recyclable materials.  The concern is notable, but the opportunity certainly appears viable based on Mikkelsen’s interest mentioned earlier.

US Potential to Participate at Home

Similar concerns about environmental hazards have affected the livelihood of waste-to-energy facilities in the United States.  While there are 89 facilities that still function today across the country, almost none of them were built within the last 15 years.  The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges “economic factors” being the main culprit of limiting new construction, although a considerable level of concern among certain environmentalist groups has also played a role in the discussion.

At least one US company has achieved success with working to create an alternative template for operating a waste-to-energy facility with newer technologies.  The big difference however, is that they doesn’t use incineration to do so.  Maryland-based Fiberight converts up to 20 tons of garbage an hour by running trash through a processing center which keeps temperatures low, rather than the conventional high-pressure, high-temperature method.  The end result is a sterilized, odor-less pulp that is made into sugars and biofuels, along with clean, unharmed plastics and metals which can be sorted easily in the process.  Although there is more physical ‘waste’ at the end of the process compared to incineration, there’s also less risk (and less money spent on the filtering) of airborne toxins to consider.

Perhaps the answers for long-term waste-to-energy solutions can be found with methodology similar to Fiberight, but if one thing’s certain, burning garbage isn’t going anywhere any time soon in Oslo.  Although the industry will continue to evolve over time, their reliance on the resources being generated from it is too strong to change much for now.

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11 Comments on "Garbage as Energy Commodity? Industry Booms in Europe"

BillT on Fri, 10th May 2013 11:41 am 



And in a few years when the amount of ‘garbage’ shrinks to a trickle because no one can afford to waste, what happens? Another techie dream ‘answer’ to the declining energy stream, more tech. The Us would be happy to ship our drug laced, radioactive, polluted crap to Europe just like we send our toxic dollars. How many freighters per day can you handle? We have mountains of the stuff, but not enough to make any incineration plan practical.

It’s been tried in my home city and the plant is down more than in operation. Has been for decades. Trash flow, not meeting pollution standards, etc, one problem after another. A huge money pit.

Hugh Culliton on Fri, 10th May 2013 12:03 pm 



BillT you said it! This concept is little more than recapturing some power out of the energy river as it winds down to the sea of entropy. It still takes vastly more energy to produce the garbage in the first place. There’s no way this can meet our energy needs. As well, did you notice how none of the diagram’s lables tells us what happens to all the CO2 that’s released through the process? Is CO2 one of the “clean” gasses that goes up the smoke stack? If so, then this is a really silly plan.

Arthur on Fri, 10th May 2013 12:26 pm 



I have a good friend who is director of a large waste processing plant in Holland; he basically confirms the picture as portrayed above for the Norwegian situation. Recently a person very dear to me died and it was my sorry task to clear the attic and barn of all the stuff that was no longer of value to anyone and had to bring it to the municipal waste dump. I was amazed how fine-grained the separation process had become: there were at least 30 catagories of waste and it took a lot of walking for me to bring all the items from my car to its last destination.

Recently I traded my old Italian sports car for a more modest fuel efficient exemplar; the guy from the tow truck told me that the very last screw of the car was going to be recycled. Now that recycling in Europe has reached high degrees, the upshot is gong to be that mining in the future is going to be largely superfluous, as everything you will ever need is already above the ground.

In Europe waste processing has become big business with the increase of commodities prices. Waste is no longer a burden, but has become an asset, with large companies competing with each other to process as many waste as possible.

Daily freight train bringing waste to centralized dumps, where separation and recycling takes place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCdbZnAr1SM

Kenz300 on Fri, 10th May 2013 1:38 pm 



Reduce…reuse and recycle…….

Second generation biofuels can now be made from waste or trash. New second generation plants are being built or have come online in the past two years.

Every landfill can be converted to produce biofuels, energy and recycled materials for new products. This is a much more sustainable solution to the disposal of waste or trash.

The inputs to the process are inexpensive since they are already being collected. It is time to look at the waste stream as the resource it really is.

dave thompson on Fri, 10th May 2013 2:05 pm 



One more example of humanity running on the hamster wheel energy fate.

Kenz300 on Fri, 10th May 2013 2:41 pm 



Ending Our Oil Addiction: Yossie Hollander at TEDxChapmanU – YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEtQ_zz4GA

Jan on Fri, 10th May 2013 3:58 pm 



Right. So we have created yet another incentive to keep converting more nature into short lived crap? Madness if you ask me, not only from an energy point of view.

GregT on Fri, 10th May 2013 5:56 pm 



Ahhh, the never ending human dream of perpetual energy. One would think that we would have woken up from our sleep by now, but some people still believe that we are not bound to the physical laws of nature.

Epic failure.

DC on Fri, 10th May 2013 6:16 pm 



Yes Arthur thats good news to be sure, but I rather suspect most of what is going on in your facility is NOT burning trash to turn into toxic, low-grade energy. Recycling say, paper or wood to make it into new paper or wood products, is nothing like tossing it into a furnace, which is basically a complete waste of time.

Recovering the metal and other materials form an old gas-burner say, is laudable(if very energy intensive). But if the metal was simply used to make a new gas-burner, are you any better off? What if it was made into several hundred bikes? Recycling has to make sense from ‘mine-to-product-to-recycle’ chain or it can end up being self-defeating.

rollin on Fri, 10th May 2013 8:40 pm 



I have one near me, it’s been around for about 20 years at least. After people complained about pollution they added more controls but never expanded it, so the waste stream is now well beyond it’s capability.

Now we have a new mountain of trash hundreds of feet high above one of the nicer trout streams in the area. From pretty rural area to rural with trash mountain.

GregT on Sat, 11th May 2013 6:13 am 



Industrial processes generally require much more energy to recycle previously used materials, then they do to process natural resources.