THE DOOLITTLE ADMINISTRATION, which had suddenly bared its claws in a desperate slash at Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley, has once more returned to its lair of passive-aggressive sulkiness, at least on the topic of the its alleged memorandum of understanding with Cahill Energy.
The bared claws were calmly but decisively trimmed in an article by former Barbados Labour Party leader Sir Henry Forde with so far unassailed facts as to the Opposition Leader’s legal ability to practise law.
It also called on the attorney general to produce a timely report on the matter, exonerating not only Mottley but all the legal luminaries, including the chief justice at the time, and the then Attorney General (Democratic Labour Party stalwart Sir Maurice King) who had a hand in calling her to the Bar.
Please forgive me for not holding my proverbial breath. It is a characteristic of the Doolittle administration to cause a bush fire somewhere to distract attention from the main conflagration, knowing that while it wouldn’t take long to put it out, it would still give their members directly exposed to the heat a chance to seek some shade. A few days later, with the news cycle moving on and people having to focus on all the other issues coming in to view, this tactic usually works quite well.
But like the garbage that will soon be heading to Vaucluse, the questions about gasification, especially plasma gasification, keep on piling up.
The Government, which has allegedly signed away Barbados’ waste to energy management rights to Cahill for the next two generations at least, may not be answering questions on subject. But you don’t have to be any great researcher to find out why gasification technology is not more widely used in the Western Hemisphere.
All you have to do is spend a couple of lazy hours surfing the internet, typing in phrases starting with the word gasification, for example, adding “controversy” or “problems” to it.
When you add the letters “MSW” to the mix you hit the jackpot.
Why, for example, are there no plasma gasification projects, envisioned to use municipal solid waste as the main ingredient, which have been closed or changed to regular combustion?
For example, at an air force base in Florida back in 2011 (Hurlburt Field, Florida), there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of its “Transportable Plasma Waste to Energy System” facility.
However, “the plan, which cost US$7.4 million to construct, was closed and sold at a government liquidation auction in May 2013,” according to Wikipedia. Why?
Still in Florida, the city of Tallahassee signed a plasma arc waste to energy contract to process 910 tonnes daily from the city and several surrounding counties but cancelled it in 2008. Why?
In Vancouver, British Columbia, a proposed plasma arc gasifier planned for the Metro Vancouver area led to protests from residents.
In 2008, a task force recommended against the project. Why?
The regional government of Madrid, Spain announced in 2008 that a plasma-based waste disposal system would be installed in the city of Alcala de Henares.
However, concern over public health and environmental threats from incinerators led to the whole project being revised “choosing an approach different than plasma gasification”.
Why? At St Lucie County, also in Florida, the first plasma-based waste disposal system in the United States was announced in 2006. But the county terminated the contract in 2012, because the company involved “couldn’t get financing for the project because it couldn’t get a technology guarantee from the technology owner, Westinghouse Plasma. Why not?
Breaches of emissions
Scotland’s Dumfries plant, commissioned to gasify more than 20 000 tonnes, produced 200 breaches of emissions limits. It was shut down in April 2011 and is now operating on a restricted basis. A waste gasification plant on the Isle of Wight was shut down in 2010 because it failed dioxin emissions tests.
Plasco Energy’s gasification pilot in Ottawa had 29 “emissions incidents”, plus 13 “spills”, in their three-year history (2009-11), during which they were able to operate only 25 per cent ºof the time.
In Massachusetts, a pilot project in New Bedford opened in 2007 with the publicised goal of gasifying MSW for electricity.
That goal was abandoned after multiple operational problems, and the plant shifted to gasifying specific, homogeneous waste streams such as rubber, plastics, railroad tiers and wood pellets for fuel.
In 2009 the company’s chief executive officer characterised gasification of MSW as “folly”.
According to Hakan Rylander, a former president of the International Solid Waste Association, A number of [gasification] plants were built in Europe and a number of efforts were done to successfully scale up the technology.
However, it didn’t work anywhere unless you had a very, very homogenous input of fuel to the reactors.
Waste is not a homogenous fuel. It has so far turned out to be too heterogenous to be able to treat in a gasification or pyrolysis, process, irrespective of how you pre-treat the waste. It is absolutely not applicable for mixed MSW with today’s technology.
Another description of problems encountered with trying to use MSW in gasification contains this statement: “For some gasification technologies, however, a significant presorting process will be required, including the removal of recyclables, sorting, shredding, and drying. . . As much as two-thirds of the raw feedstock might need to be removed before the gasification procedure can take place.”
Finally, in a chilling update on the technology, Peter Brett Associates points out that “garbage gasification attempts are characterised by economic and operational failures,”, adding that “no commercial facilities in the US have succeeded in using gasification, plasma, or pyrolysis to generate energy from MSW”.
Pilots and plants worldwide have been plagued with problems.
These examples are but a select few of the many available to even the most basic researcher as to why we should be concerned about bringing a plasma gasification plant to Barbados. But don’t ask the sulking Doolittle administration, which has foisted this technology upon us, to give you any answers.