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Showing posts with the label economics

Should Nanaimo accept Vancouver's garbage?

Should Nanaimo be the site to burn garbage from the lower mainland? As I see it: Pro: As an energy advisor I know that the more local source of electricity we generate the more stable the electrical grid becomes.  The proposed plant would yield little actual power output; not much more than the potential of power being generated from our drinking water supply (gravity-fed from the mountains). But every bit of power counts. It is FAR better to burn garbage than it is to landfill it in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Rotting compostable materials in the absence of oxygen (typical in dumps) create enormous amounts of methane gas, thousands of times more powerful in changing climate than is the carbon dioxide created when incinerating the same material. Local construction and maintenance jobs would be created. Local garbage could be incinerated. The waste heat could be used by another facility (which would then be responsible for the emissions, giving the i