Maryland requires electricity providers to obtain a certain amount of power from renewable sources. For now, trash incineration counts as one of those renewable sources, but the state Senate president is leading the charge to change that.
Under state law, electric utilities are required to get at least 35.5% of electricity from “tier 1” renewable energy sources. Each year, the portion from tier 1 sources will go up until it reaches 50% in 2030. Tier 1 sources include wind, solar and geothermal sources, as well as “waste-to-energy,” or trash incineration.
“I just have always thought that trash incineration didn't make sense as a subsidized renewable energy source,” Senate President Bill Ferguson said in a recent interview.
He first voted against classifying trash incineration as a renewable energy source in 2011, his first year in the state Senate, he said. But this year, making the change is even more important because of a bill legislative leaders are pushing that would lead to new electricity generation facilities coming online.
“What we don't want to see is those tier 1 renewable credits being given to things that are not truly renewable, things like — we want them going towards things like solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and now nuclear,” Ferguson said. “If we said all tier 1 sources today, that would include incineration, and that's not something that we need to see an expansion of.”
Ferguson’s bill removing trash incineration from the list of tier 1 renewable sources was the subject of an hour-long hearing Thursday before the state Senate’s Education, Energy, and the Environment committee.
Several South Baltimore residents told the committee they were concerned about the health effects of breathing in the chemicals emitted by WIN Waste incinerator near the Westport neighborhood.
Nineteen-year-old Carlos Sanchez said he was born and raised in South Baltimore’s Lakeland neighborhood.
“My entire life I've seen the health impacts and the health effects that this polluting facility has on my community,” Sanchez told lawmakers. “At the end of the day, I'm paying for this facility to continue to harm my health and my community.”
Sanchez highlighted a 2023 study that found that trash incinerators emit toxins such as lead, mercury, and nitrogen and sulfur oxides.
However, Mary Urban, a spokesperson for WIN Waste Baltimore, disputed that there are negative health effects caused by the South Baltimore facility.
“I promise you, if there were health impacts from our plant, we’d be the one that would be very concerned,” she said, pointing to a row of 10 workers from the facility who also attended the hearing.
Were the WIN Waste incinerator to close as a result of this bill, Baltimore would end up shipping waste to Virginia, resulting in more trucks on the road and more greenhouse gasses being released, Urban said. And if the facility doesn’t close but loses revenue as a result of the bill, “that means that’s less money for the things like the $45 million in upgrades and emission controls that we put in last year, less money to stay well under our strict federal, state, city and — under those standards, less money for the community.”
Maryland does not produce enough electricity from other renewable sources to satisfy the requirements regarding how much tier 1 energy utilities purchase, several opponents said. So removing trash incineration from that classification will force utilities to buy more electricity that is generated out of state.
“This committee will be considering sweeping energy policies this year to address the rising cost of electricity,” said Frazier Blaylock, a lobbyist with Reworld Waste, which operates a trash incinerator in Montgomery County. “This is a time for Maryland to be supporting our in-state generating facilities, not enacting a new policy that will send ratepayer dollars out of state.”
