The Waste to Energy plant in Malmo accepts garbage from many municipalities. Electricity goes into the electrical grid; heat is distributed to homes and business through the district energy system.
Groundsource Heat Pumps power the building's circulatory system to use stored groundwater to heat the building in the winter and cool it in the summer. This schematic drawing shows how the DR BYEN entertainment complex in Copenhagen.
The Danish government has the ambitious goal of reducing CO2 emissions 50% by 2030, at which time half of Denmark's electricity consumption is to be supplied by renewable energy sources. In 2002 wind energy provided 13.9% of Denmark's electricity.
For every three tons of garbage, the new super-efficient incinerator operated by SYSAV in Malmö, Sweden, extracts the equivalent energy of one ton of oil. Nine municipalities, with a total of 500,000 inhabitants, jointly own SYSAV, a regional waste service company serving southern Sweden. In addition to burning its own wastes, Sweden has become a waste importer. Revenue is generated in two ways: by selling waste incineration services, and by selling the energy and heat produced by incineration. This is the alchemy of waste incineration: Waste = Energy = Revenue.
Green power plants harness the power of wasted energy
Combined Heat and Power Plants
By Jayson Antonoff
In a traditional thermal power plant 40 percent to 60 percent of the energy contained in the fuel is dispersed into the atmosphere or cooling water as "waste" heat; in CHP plants this waste heat is captured and used for heating, industrial processes and other production processes. As a result the overall plant efficiency can be increased to 90 percent or more. For example Helsingør, a 57-MW natural gas-fired combined-cycle plant feeding a small town north of Copenhagen, uses 88 percent of the fuel energy to produce electricity and heat.
While Denmark began harvesting wind power in the 1980s, Washington's first wind project did not come on line until 2001. Denmark is about 25 percent the size of Washington, and has 3,115 MW of installed wind power; Washington has 244 MW. According to the Renewable Energy Atlas of the West, Washington has economically viable potential for about 7,100 MW of installed capacity. Why then, one wonders, is Denmark so far ahead of us?
Eliminate the need for individual furnaces and boilers by capturing waste heat from industrial plants and power generators
By Jayson Antonoff
A district energy system takes thermal energy (heating or cooling) from one or more sources and distributes it to multiple customers through a piping distribution network. Heat is often produced naturally as a by-product of electrical generation or industrial processes, but is typically simply exhausted as waste. With a district energy system waste heat can be captured and transported to homes and offices, eliminating the need for on-site furnaces and boilers.
