Landfills are a necessary component of contemporary life. According to the US EPA, the average person in the U.S. produces nearly 1,130 pounds (513 kilograms) of waste per year, and the vast majority of that ends up in landfills. Much of that trash decomposes, and releases methane and CO2, both of which are greenhouse gasses. However, methane is also a gas which can be used as a fuel, and increasingly, landfills are beginning to realize this is an energy resource and are making use of it.
About 28.8 million tons of non-recycled plastics were sent to landfills in 2008, the energy potential equivalent of 36.7 million tons of coal or 139 million barrels of oil, said the report.
The study, co-authored by researchers at the university’s Earth Engineering Center, determined that if the U.S. took all the non-recycled plastic currently sent to U.S. landfills each year and instead sent that trash to a waste-to-energy (WTE) power plant, it would produce enough electricity for 5.2 million U.S. homes annually.
Nature has unfathomable loads of passive energy, lying dormant in unknown territories. If prudently explored, these potential energy hubs can reduce our dependence on fossil fuel energy which is depleting at a rapid pace. At one point eventually “Time” will not give us a choice to rely on oil for energy, it will command us to switch over to renewable sources of energy or even other alternate sources of energy. A brief about a few of the alternate sources of energy is given below.
A pioneering new facility to generate energy from waste – one of the biggest of its kind in the UK, according to its makers – may not go ahead, owing to uncertainty over government renewable energy subsidies.
Air Products announced on Wednesday it had received planning permission from Stockton-on-Tees borough council for its first advanced gasification facility in the UK that would convert household and commercial waste to gas, producing enough energy for 50,000 homes and diverting 300,000 tonnes of waste a year from landfill.
But the company said that, despite gaining planning permission, it would be unable to finance the plant unless the government resolves questions around future subsidies for renewable energy.
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