Waste is inevitable. It exists everywhere we live. It is a byproduct of human civilization. While most see it as a problem, waste represents an incredible opportunity to achieve universal clean electricity access. I am personally excited about this possibility.
Waste can be broadly classified into two categories: organic waste (think food, animal, agricultural, wastewater, etc.) and inorganic (think plastics, metal, etc.). While we have made incredible progress over the last couple of decades to “reduce, reuse and recycle” many inorganic waste items, the same (seemingly simple) three step process doesn’t apply for organic waste. Organic waste is typically left to decompose, either on its own or in a controlled environment, known as “digesting”. In both cases, this waste generates methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that causes climate change.
Two-thirds* of today’s human generated global methane emissions come from waste. In cases where this methane is combusted to avoid the greenhouse impact, it still results in significant and harmful local air pollution. This is despite the fact that technologies exist to take organic waste and convert it to useful electricity in a reliable, highly efficient and de-centralized fashion. Modular digesters that convert waste to biogas have become more efficient in recent years and can scale up / down with relative ease. Fuel cells, such as those from Bloom Energy, can convert this biogas into electricity ~40% more efficiently than combustion-based technologies and with virtually none of the harmful local air pollutants.
My vision is that every community, be it a village, town, or city, will have a robust waste collection system to assimilate its waste, modular digesters or similar tech to convert the waste into biogas and fuel cell microgrids to convert the biogas into electricity. Renewables, such as solar and wind, and storage would supplement this framework. This community can provide all the clean, zero carbon, reliable electricity for all its residents and be self-sufficient. It will enjoy the health benefits associated with avoiding combustion of their waste, the economic benefits of 24x7 electricity and the geo-political benefits of not having to rely meaningfully on external sources for its energy needs. Moreover, this simple yet effective framework can work anywhere in the world because the raw material (waste) is everywhere.
How do we achieve this vision? Developed nations can lead the way because of established waste collection infrastructure, robust regulatory and legal frameworks, and efficient capital markets. The low hanging fruit would be wastewater treatment plants, where infrastructure to process the incoming wastewater into biogas largely exists already. Deploying fuel cell microgrids at these plants will make these critical infrastructure facilities net energy producers for the communities they serve. Identifying the right business models for the various waste sources and achieving sufficient scale will allow us to replicate across the globe.
Nature has shown that species that are better at managing their waste have a higher chance of surviving in the long term. Human generated waste is expected to grow by 70% by 2050**. Making the most of this waste is not only crucial to universal energy access and debcarbonization, but also to the long term survival of humanity.
Sources: *Global Carbon Project. **World Bank report "What a Waste 2.0"
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