Trash incinerators spew cancer-causing dioxins and other bad stuff, as well as lots of greenhouse gases. Ironically, Maryland’s current Renewable Portfolio Standard provides incentives for burning trash as well as for producing clean energy.
The Sierra Club's motto is Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet. Thus we were heartened to learn that 195 nations came together in Paris to effectively address adverse climate change in a comprehensive way and that the bipartisan Maryland Commission on Climate Change voted unanimously to set the state on a path to achieve a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The Maryland Climate Coalition, which includes the Sierra Club and other environmental and health organizations, is working with Maryland legislators to increase in the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) from 20% by 2022 to 25% by 2020. However as noted above, the current RPS provides incentives for burning trash, as well as incentivizing clean energy. For these reasons, the Sierra Club is working to strip harmful technologies such as waste incineration from the RPS while increasing its collective standard.
This is all brought home considering that Energy Answers International plans to soon start constructing an enormous incinerator in the Curtis Bay section of Baltimore, a disadvantaged community already plagued by other polluting industry including coal-fired generators. Sadly, RPS incentives bolster the business case for this monstrosity. In mid-December 2015, well over 100 people demonstrated outside the Maryland Department of the Environment urging that agency to pull Energy Answers’ permit to proceed, because the company has already violated the terms of that permit. As I write these words, the MDE has not issued a ruling on this case. The possibility of another polluting incinerator underscores the pressing need for the state legislators to clean up Maryland’s RPS as we increase the RPS level and accelerate its timetable.