Is burning debris green? In Sweden, there is little debate
Editor’s note: Dan Haugen traveled to Scandinavia this month as part of Heinrich Böll Foundation‘s Climate Media Fellowship Program.
HELSINGBORG, SWEDEN – The view from the control room in the Filborna energy plant for waste to energy is dizzying.
In a ten-storey cave below the observation deck with a glass bottom, a sea of stringy, gray and brown rubbish is in a constant state when garbage trucks dump fresh cargo into the massive pit.
A pair of giant orange taps take turns scooping and spreading the debris and mixing it to an even moisture content before feeding it into a slowly moving metal grid that will carry it in an incinerator.
It looks like dirty business, but in Sweden this is seen as one of the country’s great green achievements.
While waste for energy incinerators is still a controversial topic among American environmental activists, there has been little such debate in Sweden as the country has increased its waste incineration capacity over the past decade.
“I have not heard any complaints, I never think – says Björn Palm, head of the energy technology department at KTH, KTH.
Import garbage for energy
Sweden now imports about 700,000 tonnes of waste per year to help produce electricity and heat for cities such as Helsingborg, a historic coastal network with about 100,000 people in southwestern Sweden.
The Filborna plant is among several new waste-to-energy plants that were built in Sweden since 2002, when the country adopted a ban on placing biodegradable waste in landfills.
Helsingborg could not dispose of its own waste to transport its waste to other cities’ incinerators. At the same time, it had an aging wood-fired power plant that became less economical to operate.
The city’s municipal energy supply, Öresundskraft, received unanimous support for building the energy and energy facility from all five political parties represented in the city government.
It is a stark contrast to what it would probably have encountered in many American cities, where environmental activists have blocked or delayed projects on the grounds that they can damage recycling efforts and exacerbate urban air pollution.
In Minneapolis, for example, a proposed expansion of an energy recycling facility in the city center has taken place a topic for debate in the city’s mayoral race.
Why the political differences?
“I think Swedes are more practical,” said Carl Michaud, Hennepin County Environmental Manager, who runs the waste-to-energy facility in Minneapolis.
It may be part of it, but there are also major factors that explain why the United States has not fully used waste for energy, namely an abundance of cheap energy and cheap land.
Sweden does not have a lot of fossil fuels, so it is due to importing these energy sources. As a smaller country, it also has fewer wide spaces to stop rubbish at landfills.
The country also realized that landfills have a major climate impact. When materials break down in landfills, they emit methane – a greenhouse gas that is 20 times stronger than coal.
“When you combine the resource issue with the climate issue, it is very easy to conclude that landfilling is very bad for the environment and for society, because you get nothing out of it – except problems,” says Weine Wiqvist, director of Avfall Sverige, Sweden’s waste to-energy compound.
The recycling rate is still high
Today, only 1 percent of Sweden’s waste ends up in landfills. Half of it is recycled and 49 percent is burned in waste to energy plants, an increase from 39 percent in 1999.
In Helsingborg, about 50 trucks pay per day to dump their rubbish at the Filborna factory, which can receive up to 160,000 tonnes of rubbish per year. The trash is burned to create steam, which means that a steam turbine produces up to 18 megawatts of electricity. The waste heat from that process is captured and introduced into the city’s district heating system, which provides about 40 percent of the city’s heating needs.
Other by-products include bottom ash, which is sorted for metals and then recycled as backfill for road construction or other projects, and fly ash, which is toxic and deposited in a landfill that is certified to handle hazardous materials.
Air emissions are cleaned through a series of scrubbers and filters and come out “far below what is actually allowed”, says Göran Skoglund, Öresundskraft’s press officer.
Öresundskraft claims that the waste-to-energy plant, which began operating at the end of 2012, is the cleanest and most efficient of its kind in Sweden. However, it is not fundamentally different from the technology available in the United States.
“The same manufacturer supplies both continents. This means that emission levels are comparable “, says Matt Kasper, specialist assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress.
Punch has written about America’s largely untapped opportunity to limit greenhouse gas emissions through greater use of landfills. Among his conclusions from the report: it does not have to hurt the recycling rate.
“Waste for energy and recycling are compatible with each other,” Kasper said. “Countries in Europe that use waste for energy have some of the highest recycling rates in the world.”
Sweden’s recycling rate of 50 percent, for example, is more than twice as high as the United States’ 24 percent. Even when Sweden imports waste, the demand for fuel has not decreased in the recycling rate.
Avfall Sverige, the waste-to-energy association, plans that Sweden’s recycling rate within a decade will approach 60 percent, but it also expects that the volume of waste generated will also increase.
Skoglund is not worried that Filborna will run out of fuel. In fact, he’s more worried about what it means for the planet’s future.
“This sounds strange, but I hope the fuel disappears,” said Skoglund. “It would be good for this planet. It is not sustainable to produce the amount of garbage that we make.”