Trash

Mark Twain said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. One might add trash.

Modern civilization creates more trash every day than it could handle. Some are seduced by the idea that all this trash can be safely converted into energy, that constant deficit in modern life.

But let’s not call waste-to-energy technologies “renewable.” That is pure disinformation.

True, the supply of waste is abundant – maybe even limitless. It is not, however, a naturally occurring material like sunlight, the wind and waves or any other such source of renewable energy.

The trash that some want to convert into energy is composed of food waste, plastics, scrap metal and other toxic substances. To turn that into energy, it must be incinerated therefore producing large volumes of noxious fumes that poison all forms of life and aggravate climate change.

Seduced by the idea that waste could be used to produce energy and overwhelmed by the volume of trash we produce, our environmental policies appear to be drifting towards dilution of the Clean Air Act. The incineration ban, in place for several years, was lifted in the case of thermal incinerators burning garbage to produce energy. The DENR even issued an order providing guidelines for waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities taking in municipal solid waste.

Over the past months, several bills were filed in Congress seeking to repeal the incineration ban. Should any of these find their way into law, our environment will be in peril.

Experts have produced a long list of dangers associated with WTE facilities. To begin with, WTEs require as much land as sanitary landfills. Singapore has been heavily dependent on WTE. Its Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment admits that WTE facilities are extremely expensive to build and operate. The method has now proven to be unsustainable.

According to experts in the Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), toxic ash resulting from incineration cannot be dumped in regular landfills. The treatment and disposal of this toxic ash is an additional cost not usually computed in.

Jorge Emmanuel, professor of environment science and engineering, warns that any technology producing emissions is inherently dangerous. WTE plants release pollutants into the air, the soil and the water harmful to other forms of life. The ultra-fine particles emitted by burning trash could cause heart attacks and lung diseases. They also release dangerous metals like mercury and lead that impair the nervous system.

In sum, according to Emmanuel, emissions from WTE are “the most toxic chemical pollutant known to science.” These emissions disseminate highly toxic dioxin that embeds in the food chain. Humans living close to WTE plants can inhale this deadly chemical directly, quickly delivering it to the bloodstream.

The situation is made more dangerous for us since only 39.05 percent of our communities have access to materials recovery facilities. We do not have enough sanitary landfills to accept the toxic ash from burning trash.

Trying to pass off WTE plants as a form of “renewable energy” is false science.

Demagoguery

NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan burst the bubble of demagoguery by declaring the country cannot handle a fast transition to a predominantly renewable energy (RE) mix. We simply do not have the technology and the financing to do that, he adds.

Those who have made a cottage industry of peddling the illusion of a rapid transition to RE defy science, economics and the rule of law. Although we have seen a burst of RE investments the past few years, this source of energy is expensive and intermittent. It cannot fill our need for reliable base load capacity.

In addition, much of our available RE remains subsidized by conventional energy sources through feed-in tariffs. Should conventional energy plants be phased out rapidly, there will be no source of subsidies for RE. “Green” energy will have to charge consumers real costs.

One such group peddling the delusion of rapid transition to RE is the self-proclaimed Power for People Coalition (P4P). The policy positions this group takes, however, is entirely devoid of utility economics and utterly disregards existing regulatory policies. It peddles the opiate of cheaper energy without proposing a clear strategy to bring down costs. All it offers is some fraudulent assumption that shifting to RE will cure all our energy pains. This is a cult.

Recently, P4P won some media mileage by demanding a lifestyle check be conducted on commissioners of the Energy Regulatory Commission. Other than insinuating a crime, this noisy group provides no clear basis to support their demand.

Earlier, P4P criticized Meralco for securing power supply contracts through a Competitive Selection Process (CSP). But the CSP is commanded by government policy. The process ensures that contracts are awarded to those who offer the lowest prices. This benefits consumers in the end.

If there was an ounce of fairness in P4P’s evaluation of our energy situation, they ought to have praised Meralco for being the only distribution utility that offered a rate review of a lapsed period when there was no regulatory rate reset. As a result, Meralco voluntarily refunded consumers billions of pesos entirely on their initiative.

P4P, if it was anything other than a group trolling Meralco, should have demanded that all distribution utilities undergo a rate review process. All other distribution utilities charge much higher tariff rates than Meralco.

But alas, P4P is there principally to attack Meralco rather than achieve a sustainable energy industry.