First, the article compares the number of waste to energy facilities, in particular municipal waste to energy, in both Denmark and the US. Denmark (pop. 5.5 million) currently has 29 facilities to the 87 of the US (pop. 300 million). Although the US has more facilities by count, when considering the population of the US, we should have nearly 1600 facilities. The article goes on to say that one of the main reasons they think this trend hasn't caught on in the US is because of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). But if the Europeans don't care about a waste to energy plant being in their back yard, than why do Americans. Is this a valid argument? What do you think?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Waste-to-Energy, Europe vs. USA
After researching all types of waste to energy I have noticed an interesting trend, almost all of the information on the Internet about waste to energy is somehow always related to some European country, and it seems that the US is hardly ever mentioned. Why is that? I find this issue to be very interesting and therefore I am going to look into why this this and see if anyone else can help me figure out why the US is so far behind in applying all this great waste to energy technology. Here is an interesting article I found that gives some basics on the issue at hand, and gives several reasons why it might be that the US is not keeping up with all those European countries.
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Americans might be more BANANA--build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. And I think we've been mightly slow when it comes to energy innovation, probably thanks to entrenched oil and gas interests and our utilities system.
ReplyDeleteYou might check out the Waste for Life (Basura por Vida) project too. I think it's in South America.