Last week, Massachusetts’ Patrick-Murray administration made an announcement declaring that the moratorium on new facilities for incineration of municipal solid waste will remain in place.  In addition, the statement also included two other solid waste management related announcements: an outline of priorities for expanding the Commonwealth’s recycling efforts, and the suspension of permitting for facilities proposing to use construction and demolition materials (C&D) as fuel for energy generation until a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts of using such materials is complete.  The last part of this announcement is most relevant to Ze-gen given that our primary feedstock for Ze-gen’s process is C&D.

C&D represents a significant portion of Massachusetts’ waste stream and the recent announcement prevents innovative companies from employing new, effective solutions to manage this waste.  In 2007, Massachusetts generated 3,940,000 tons of C&D (MassDEP).  On average, the amount of wood in the C&D waste stream is just over 30%, according to DSM Environmental’s 2007 Construction & Demolition Debris Industry Study For the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection FINAL REPORT May 16, 2008, Executive Summary. So, this means that Massachusetts generates approximately 1 million tons of wood waste each year.  The study also found that the recovery rate for waste wood is low (about 27%), resulting in a “significant amount of waste wood being landfilled as residuals.”  The lack of economically viable end-use markets for wood waste represents a significant obstacle toward ending the amount of waste heading to landfills.

We at Ze-gen are very disappointed with this latest policy change from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.  The proper use of waste wood, a biomass feedstock that would otherwise be landfilled, offers Massachusetts a source of domestically produced, clean energy. The inability to obtain permits severely undermines the potential to harness the latent energy value of wood waste, and forces cleantech innovation to go elsewhere.

We plan to contribute to the public debate on this issue to hopefully shed light on the dangers of this policy change going forward.   We encourage you to do the same by attending the Public Meeting on Massachusetts Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy being held tomorrow December 17, 2009 from 6:30 – 8:30pm in Holyoke, MA.   The event will be held at:

Holiday Inn in Holyoke
245 Whiting Farms Road, Holyoke, MA
(Off of I-91, just north of Mass Pike)
Time: 6:30 – 8:30pm