PROJECTS
Biomass
Biomass is renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals.
Biomass sources for energy include:
Wood and wood processing wastes: firewood, wood pellets, and wood chips, lumber and furniture mill sawdust and waste
Biogenic materials in municipal solid waste—paper, cotton, and wool products, and food, yard, and wood wastes
Animal manure and human sewage
MSW
Waste-to-energy plants burn Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), often called garbage or trash, to produce steam in a boiler that is used to generate electricity.
MSW is a mixture of energy-rich materials such as paper, plastics, yard waste, and products made from wood. For every 100 pounds of MSW in the United States, about 85 pounds can be burned as fuel to generate electricity. Waste-to-energy plants reduce 2,000 pounds of garbage to ash weighing about 300 pounds to 600 pounds, and they reduce the volume of waste by about 87%.
There are different types of waste-to-energy systems or technologies. The most common type used in the United States is the mass-burn system, where unprocessed MSW is burned in a large incinerator with a boiler and a generator for producing electricity
Wood Energy
There are several power plants that burn mostly wood to generate electricity, and there are some coal-burning power plants that burn wood chips with coal to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions.
The residential sector is the second-largest user of wood for energy in United States.
Sewage
Turning wastewater into biogas is not new in the US. For decades, biogas has been used for heating or to power generators.
Reducing Agricultural Methane
Agricultural activity is one of the largest anthropogenic sources of methane emissions globally and is the largest source in the US, responsible for the release of 10 million tons of fugitive methane in 2020. Methane emissions from US agriculture are mostly released by livestock—approximately 24% from manure management systems, and 70% from enteric fermentation, a digestive process which causes animals to produce and expel methane. A diverse array of solutions are being deployed to mitigate methane emissions from manure, while emissions from enteric fermentation remain practically unaddressed.