Glorious Rubbish, Have We Been Wasting Your Energy All Along?

Fairfax - Lia Timson

A never-ending resource: rubbish. Credit: Graham Tidy

Talking points 10,000 tonnes a day of domestic rubbish are collected at the tip the rubbish is 55 per cent organic on average, but also includes plastic, glass and paper as disposed of in household bins  the plant captures the methane gas produced by decomposing rubbish and transforms it into CO2 that is converted into electricity by thermoelectric engines the plant produces enough energy to power a city of 300,000 people the plant generates carbon credits as a reward for not releasing the gases into the atmosphere

Caieiras, Sao Paulo: As Australia debates the need to spend money on renewable energy projects to power our future without destroying the environment, it is worth taking a look at rubbish.
Is this never-ending resource being used to our advantage? What if, instead of just seeing it as something to get rid of, we put it to work?
That is a question environmental engineer Marcelo Camargo, manager of one of the world's largest biogas electricity generators on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, asked himself.
Rubbish tips produce copious amounts of methane gas which must be allowed to escape to avoid combusting the sites. It is typically burnt in multiple flares to convert it into CO², a gas many times less toxic than methane, or CH4. The CO² is typically released into the atmosphere.
And that's what the Solvi Group of companies, which owns and manages 39 landfill sites in Brazil, used to do, in the process earning carbon credits in the country's carbon trading scheme.

Marcelo Camargo, manager of Termoverde Caieiras, Brazil's largest biogas (methane) energy plant, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Credit: Lia Timson

"But we saw an opportunity," says Camargo, who's been in the business for more than a decade and oversaw the plant's construction.
"We thought it's a pity, we're throwing energy away. We're taking methane, which has calorific value, and only generating credits. We thought, let's generate energy."
In 2011 Termoverde, a Solvi subsidiary, opened a small thermoelectric plant in Salvador, in the north-east state of Bahia, as a pilot, and in 2016 used lessons from that site to build a 100 million reais ($39 million) modern, modular, green power plant in Caieiras.
Nestled in lush subtropical hills just 33 kilometres out of the Sao Paulo megametropolis, Termoverde Caieiras is surrounded by an eucalyptus plantation and a environmental reserve belt that has the added bonus of shielding it from the road. The power plant itself is not much bigger than a couple of football fields and most Paulistas don't even know it is there.

Trucks work on the 15,000-square-metre rubbish tip in Caieiras, Brazil, where black pipes take methane away to the power plant. Credit: Lia Timson

Every day, hundreds of garbage trucks come and go, bringing 10,000 tonnes of rubbish from half of Sao Paulo's households as well as from surrounding towns. Their loads, 55 per cent organic on average, are dumped onto sections of the plant's 15,000-square-metre tip operated by sister company Essencis. The loads are then compacted and landscaped onto terraces, and left to decompose.
A network of perforated pipes allows the methane generated by the decomposing rubbish to travel upwards. In the same pipes, the slurry, the compost's liquid residue, travels downwards into a dam and later by truck to a sewage treatment plant.

The methane is control-burnt in four large chimneys and piped into thermo engines in modular containers. Credit: Lia Timson

Then, instead of burning aimlessly through small flares, the gas is captured, piped and control-burnt into CO² before being piped again into 21 containers housing individual generators. From here, it leaves as high-voltage electricity transmitted by cables to the site's substation, before feeding the state's power grid.
The plant produces enough energy to power a city of 300,000 – say, Wollongong in NSW or Geelong in Victoria – all year around. That's 29.5 megawatts of energy that would otherwise be wasted, and worse, released into the atmosphere.

Five of the 21 modular generators at Termoverde Caieiras. Credit: Lia Timson

The waste-to-energy technology is known in Australia as anaerobic digestion, that is, without oxygen, and is currently deployed in a modest site in Wollert, Victoria, where it powers the Yarra Valley Water sewage treatment plant. The $27-million 18-month-old site has a capacity to process up to 33,000 tonnes of organic waste each year, or 100 tonnes per day. According to Yarra Valley Water, any surplus energy from the plant is exported to the grid.
That's what Termoverde does too. It sells its energy to large commercial clients, and any surplus it sells on the open market. It has proven such a hit the company is thinking of converting all its sites into such private green-energy engines.

Electricity from the containers is fed into the site's substation and then the state's grid. Credit: Lia Timson

Key to the technology is that it doesn't burn or heat the waste – as opposed to combustion and gasification – technology, which use incinerators and boilers respectively.

How it works
Household waste-to-energy using anaerobic digestion

Graphic: Jamie Brown   Source: Termoverde Caieiras

Victoria is planning a gasification plant for Laverton North that would take up to 200,000 tonnes a year of residual household waste.
NSW excludes biological processes, such as anaerobic digestion and composting of waste from its Energy from Waste Policy Statement, in favour of thermal treatments such as combustion, oxidation and gasification.
A planned $700-million waste-to-energy incinerator plant by Dial A Dump Industries in Western Sydney was dumped in July amid uncertainty over the project’s human health risks and impact on air and water quality.
"Incinerators are only used where there's no room for landfill, like in Germany or Japan," Camargo says, adding that in Brazilian terms such solutions cost twice as much as anaerobic digestion because of the cost of heating the waste.
"Here that technology is superseded, and it has the added problem of burning dioxins from things like PVC which are much more damaging to the environment.
“And by not burning the rubbish to create energy, I’m making clean energy from a renewable source.
"I'm also helping reduce the amount of odour emissions from the landfill site."
In order to obtain the permits necessary to operate in Brazil, where more than 80 per cent of all energy generation is from renewable sources, the company had to build the substation and transfer its ownership to the state electricity transmission company, which maintains it.
"There are very stringent requirements, but the environmental advantages are undisputable.
"I'm transforming rubbish into energy and contributing to the national policy of reduction of solid waste. That's what matters."
Sergio Leitao, director of the not-for-profit Instituto Escolhas and former Greenpeace Brazil executive, told Sao Paulo daily newspaper Folha de SP this month that no single renewable energy source can be relied upon to supply an entire country's electricity system.
"We shouldn't necessarily select the option with lowest cost or the most competitive," he said, referring also to wind, solar and hydro energy (the latter supplies 68 per cent of Brazil's needs).
"It's how they complement each other that provides the best and most efficient mix."

Links

• Waste to energy plant planned for Melbourne's west
• Western Sydney incinerator dumped by independent commission
• Major US climate report says more epic disasters coming
• Unsubsidised Wind And Solar Now Cheapest Form Of Bulk Energy
• 'We Want To Do Everything We Can': NSW Readies For Renewables Surge
• Former UN Climate Chief Says World Doesn't Need Australia's 'Toxic' Coal
• Climate Change And Renewables Driving New Mining Boom, Mining Chief Says
• Clean Energy Is Cheap, Surging – And Headed For A Fall
• Coal's Days Are Numbered, Top Government Adviser Says
• States And Territories Lead Way On Renewables, Climate
• Don't Despair: The Climate Fight Is Only Over If You Think It Is
• 'Tsunami' Of New Wind And Solar Projects Drives Renewables Output To A Record
• Utilities Have A Problem: The Public Wants 100% Renewable Energy, And Quick
• Wanted: citizen climate scientists for nationwide study
• 'Without balance' and 'sensible': Labor's massive energy plan divides critics

Four Ways Our Cities Can Cut Transport Emissions In A Hurry: Avoid, Shift, Share And Improve

The Conversation - Hussein Dia

Urgent and radical change in urban transport policies and practices will benefit the planet and future generations. blurAZ/Shutterstock

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently warned that global warming could reach 1.5℃ as early as 2030. The landmark report by leading scientists urged nations to do more to avert an impending crisis.
We have 12 years, the report said, to contain greenhouse gas emissions. This includes serious efforts to reduce transport emissions.
In Australia, transport is the third-largest source of greenhouse gases, accounting for around 17% of emissions. Passenger cars account for around half of our transport emissions.
The transport sector is also one of the strongest factors in emissions growth in Australia. Emissions from transport have increased nearly 60% since 1990 – more than any other sector. Australia is ranked 20th out of 25 of the largest energy-using countries for transport energy efficiency.
Cities around the world have many opportunities to reduce emissions. But this requires renewed thinking and real commitment to change.

Our planet can’t survive our old transport habits
Past (and still current) practices in urban and transport planning are fundamental causes of the transport problems we face today.
Over the past half-century, cities worldwide have grown rapidly, leading to urban sprawl. The result was high demand for motorised transport and, in turn, increased emissions.
The traffic gridlock on roads and motorways was the catalyst for most transport policy responses during that period. The solution prescribed for most cities was to build out of congestion by providing more infrastructure for private vehicles. Limited attention was given to managing travel demand or improving other modes of transport.
Equating mobility with building more roads nurtured a tendency towards increased motorisation, reinforcing an ever-increasing inclination to expand the road network. The result was a range of unintended adverse environmental, social and economic consequences. Most of these are rooted in the high priority given to private vehicles.

What are the opportunities to change?
The various strategies to move our cities in the right direction can be grouped into four broad categories: avoid, shift, share, and improve. Major policy, behaviour and technology changes are required to make these strategies work.
Avoid strategies aim to slow the growth of travel. They include initiatives to reduce trip lengths, such as high-density and mixed land use developments. Other options decrease private vehicle travel – for example, through car/ride sharing and congestion pricing. And teleworking and e-commerce help people avoid private car trips altogether.
Shanghai’s Hongqiao transport hub is a unique example of an integrated air, rail and mixed land use development. It combines Hongqiao’s airport, metro subway lines, and regional high-speed rail. A low-carbon residential and commercial precinct surrounds the hub.

Layout of Shanghai Hongqiao integrated transport hub. Peng & Shen (2016)/Researchgate, CC BY

Shift strategies encourage travellers to switch from private vehicles to public transport, walking and cycling. This includes improving bus routes and service frequency.
Pricing strategies that discourage private vehicles and encourage other modes of transport can also be effective. Policies that include incentives that make electric vehicles more affordable have been shown to encourage the shift.
Norway is an undisputed world leader in electric vehicle uptake. Nearly a third of all new cars sold in 2017 were a plug-in model. The electric vehicle market share was expected to be as much as 40% within a year.

An electric vehicle charging station in the Norwegian capital Oslo. Softulka/Shutterstock

Share strategies affect car ownership. New sharing economy businesses are already moving people, goods and services. Shared mobility, rather than car ownership, is providing city dwellers with a real alternative.
This trend is likely to continue and will pose significant challenges to car ownership models.
Uber claims that its carpooling service in Mumbai saved 936,000 litres of fuel and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2,662 metric tonnes within one year. It also reports that UberPool in London achieved a reduction of more than 1.1 million driving kilometres in just six months.

UberPool is available in inner Melbourne suburbs. Trip must begin and end in this area. Uber

Improve strategies promote the use of technologies to optimise performance of transport modes and intelligent infrastructure. These include intelligent transport systems, urban information technologies and emerging solutions such as autonomous mobility.
Our research shows that sharing 80% of autonomous vehicles will reduce net emissions by up to 20%. The benefits increase with wider adoption of autonomous shared electric vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles can offer first- and last-kilometre solutions, especially in outer suburbs with limited public transport services. Monopoly919/Shutterstock

The urgency and benefits of steering our cities towards a path of low-carbon mobility are unmistakable. This was recognised in the past but progress has been slow. Today, the changing context for how we build future cities – smart, healthy and low-carbon – presents new opportunities.
If well planned and implemented, these four interventions will collectively achieve transport emission reduction targets. They will also improve access to the jobs and opportunities that are preconditions for sound economic development in cities around the world.

Links

• New UN report outlines 'urgent, transformational' change needed to hold global warming to 1.5°C
• City-wide trial shows how road use charges can reduce traffic jams
• Stuck in traffic: we need a smarter approach to congestion than building more roads
• The new electric vehicle highway is a welcome gear shift, but other countries are still streets ahead
• Utopia or nightmare? The answer lies in how we embrace self-driving, electric and shared vehicles

467 Ways To Die On A Warming Globe

The Guardian - Clive Hamilton

While most people in most countries accept the truth of climate science, they reject its implications. What can be done to change that?

‘An Earth warmer by four degrees – and after the unwinding of the 2015 Paris agreement that is the path we have returned to – will impose enormous stresses on all societies’ Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images 

A new study published in Nature has found evidence for 467 ways in which climate hazards due to global warming are making life on the planet harder for humans. It confirms that we are witnessing a shift in the functioning of the Earth system as a whole, a shift to a new state that is unsympathetic to the continued flourishing of human life.
A changing climate is only one feature of a warming globe. Human activity has bounced the Earth into a state that has no equivalent in its 4.5 billion year history.
The Earth’s new trajectory as it spins into the future has led scientists to tell us we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. We have crossed a threshold and the geological clock cannot be turned back. The disruption we have caused is increasingly unpredictable and uncontrollable, and it has no endpoint.
There are, therefore, two questions humankind must face. What must we do to prevent serial disasters becoming existential catastrophe? And how can we make our social and economic systems flexible enough to cope with the new dispensation?
There are several reasons an international agreement has proven so hard. The leading one is sabotage by climate science deniers. Can it be countered? Climate science denial was invented and propagated mainly in the United States by the fossil fuel industry in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The challenge is no longer how to use information to change people’s minds. The challenge is how to change a culture

Activists know how to thwart an industry lobbying campaign. But then something calamitous happened – rejecting climate science became caught up in the culture war. The Tea Party and Fox News were largely responsible for the shift. Before then, even a conservative like Sarah Palin accepted the science and called for action. But after 2009, rejecting climate science became a badge of political identity for conservatives.
From that point onwards, facts no longer mattered.
So the challenge is no longer how to use information to change people’s minds. The challenge is how to change a culture. No one knows how to do that.

Just Trump?
Last week Donald Trump, who calls climate science a hoax, visited a California devastated by wildfires. When asked whether his visit would change his mind about climate change he said “No”. What else could he say? The journalist was asking him if he would change who he was.
Yet it’s too easy to blame the world’s slowness to act on crazy American deniers. Because, in a way, we are all climate science deniers.
The full truth of what humans have done is almost impossible to take in. To fully embrace the message of the climate scientists means giving up the deepest presupposition of modernity – the idea of progress. Relinquishing our belief in progress means we must let go of the future, because we have been taught from infancy that the future is progress.
In our minds, replacing the old future defined by progress with a new future defined by endless struggle requires a period of grieving. Not many people have the stomach for that.
While most people in most countries accept the truth of climate science, they don’t accept its implications. What can be done to change that?

Changing minds
When it comes to communicating the science’s message to the public, there is no magic potion to be found. A lot has been tried and some of it works reasonably well, up to a point. The scientists must keep doing their research and putting it out. Accusing them of alarmism is a calculated political slander; in truth, they have consistently been too cautious in their warnings, especially in IPCC reports.
Yet the meaning of their reports has not sunk in. It’s clear that an Earth warmer by four degrees – and after the unwinding of the 2015 Paris agreement that is the path we have returned to – will impose enormous stresses on all societies.
In poorer countries, it will lead to mass migrations, many deaths and violent conflict. The effects in wealthy countries will depend on who holds power and how they govern. Disasters, food shortages and waves of immigration will magnify resentment against the rich, who will be attempting to insulate themselves from the turmoil around them.
But they too depend on the infrastructure of urban life – electricity and water supply, sewerage and waste disposal, transport systems for food and so on. And they can’t insulate themselves from social upheaval.
Some communities will learn to adapt more effectively. Smaller, cooperative communities will be best placed to adapt themselves to endure the troubles.
But however humans live or die on the new Earth we have made, we are approaching the endpoint of modernity and must accept that it is finally true that man is the environment of man.

*Clive Hamilton is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University and author of Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene

Links

• Broad threat to humanity from cumulative climate hazards intensified by greenhouse gas emissions (pdf)
• Trump on own administration's climate report: 'I don't believe it'
• The Human Signature: Edward Burtynsky's Anthropocene – in pictures