 Welcome everyone to this panel which is entitled energy from waste and we don't want to waste any more time we want to get right to it because there are so many exciting things that we can do with waste that as a matter of fact many times we don't even refer to it as that anymore because we think about it as a very very important and valuable resource that has many more uses that we can get out of it so to start us off on our discussion today is Patrick surface who is executive director with the American Biogas Council. Thanks Carol and thanks for putting this panel together it's always great to be a part of this event I'm the executive director of the American Biogas Council and we represent 220 companies across the US that are obviously interested in building more biogas systems so who here just let's do a raise of hands who here knows what a biogas system is all right it's getting better every year just a little bit great so for those of you who did not raise your hands biogas systems you can basically think of a big tank and it sort of works like a cow's stomach you know cows cow will take in food and it'll digest it and it'll burp out methane and then there's some poop and pee that comes out too same thing think about putting organic material like food waste and manure and the sludge that you pull out of wastewater and putting it into a big tank with some microbes those microbes eat up the organic material they burp out the methane which is basically like renewable natural gas especially something that Marcus is going to talk more about and you get to that has energy in it that methane can use for energy just like natural gas can and then the solids and liquids come out too and all the nutrients that were in your food waste and in your manures those come through too so the solids and liquids that come out of that tank out of your biogas system those can be used as like a super fertilizer and being able to recycle those nutrients and use those solids and liquids is an often overlooked but a missed opportunity so something that we're we're focusing on a lot so the right now if you look at the biogas market in the US there are 2,000 operational systems most people don't know that because most people don't know how many wastewater treatment facilities have biogas systems and of those 2,000 about 1200 of them are at wastewater facilities but there are only 250 on farms the potential is about 11,000 systems across the country so going to from 2000 to 11,000 and if we do that we'll be able to encourage about 33 billion dollars of capital investment about 275,000 construction jobs 20,000 permanent jobs tons and tons and tons of greenhouse gas emissions equal to removing 11,000 sorry 11 million vehicles off of the roads and all in that time that we are doing that we're creating an infrastructure to handle all those organic materials which are otherwise not necessarily being recycled or maybe not necessarily being used the best way that they could as Carol said as we look across the waste spectrum and you look at your glass metal paper and plastics and your organics and everything else what is the best use of all those materials that we can really that we can really use so we see a huge potential for market growth in the US and the question that I've been getting a lot today is well why isn't the industry growing faster and the simple response to that because I think in all these technologies is that it's always complicated right but the simple response is that we don't have any major barriers we have lots of little small speed bumps it's small speed bumps like the fact that if you go to your local permitting facility and say I want to build a biogas system what permits do I need chances are the person that you're talking to is going to not have a clue what to give you and so they're going to try to give you something else that doesn't fit a biogas system so you either have to fit your square peg into their round hole or you have to create a square hole to fit your square peg and those things take time and time takes money and so it's nothing that's really insurmountable it's just that the industry is really just starting to grow and those growing pains need to be worked through so that we can develop more systems but there are also things on the federal policy side that we can do lots of small changes that we can make that can really help and if we look at federal policy today the biogas industry has two asks one of those is for the production and investment tax credits under section 45 these are for biogas electricity facilities so if you have your biogas system what are you using the biogas for you making vehicle fuel going to a pipeline going to electricity anything to use natural gas for if you were making it into electricity then there's currently until the end of this year there is an investment tax credit that our industry loves but unless that investment tax credit is extended beyond this year for the section 45 technologies which also include hydro and geothermal and waste energy and biomass then we don't have the certainty in the industry to be able to go through the two to three year project development timeline that it takes to develop these projects we need that certainty the second ask is actually a bill that was just introduced three weeks ago we're super excited it creates an investment tax credit for biogas projects that do not use their biogas for electricity so all the rest of the biogas projects and perhaps most importantly it covers nutrient recycling technologies so you can put a nutrient recycling system on the end of your biogas system and that's really important because if you are a farmer and you're spreading your raw cattle dairy chicken poultry or swine manure on your fields that raw manure has to be spread when crops are not growing that means that there's not much of a physical barrier not much of a chemical barrier from those nutrients going into the waterways and that can contribute to watershed pollution if instead you're putting a nutrient recovery technology on the end of your biogas system that removes the nitrogen and phosphorus from those digested materials and then sells those nutrients as fertilizers to the farms that actually need them because otherwise they're buying synthetic fertilizers then you're putting exactly the right ratio of nutrients on to your farm and you're creating a product that can be sold into the other watershed and those nutrient recovery technologies some of them are commercial but they're just really they're just really developing and this new bill that was just introduced HR 5489 5489 it's the Agriculture Environmental Stewardship Act has 19 cosponsors now 11 Republicans and 8 Democrats and we're looking for more cosponsors for that especially as tax titles are introduced so lots of great things to come out of the biogas industry I look forward to questions and I know the rest of our panelists here are going to cover a lot of things that are very similar to to what we do and what we're all trying to do with you making the best use of our waste materials and creating some energy great and that's another whole way to get a whole lot of stuff out of our watersheds and create revenue streams right so we're now going to turn to Marcus Gillette who is the director of public and government affairs for the renewable natural gas coalition perfect segue yes thank you very much so I'll follow Patrick's lead here how many of you know what the difference is between biogas and renewable natural gas yeah that's good if you did I'd be very impressed so renewable natural gas like biogas is derived from the methane that is emitted when organic matter decomposes now that is biogas so the methane that's captured at these facilities landfills wastewater treatment plants separated municipal solid waste digesters and ag facilities today say ag again landfills that is captured and then cleaned via technological process to a product that is indistinguishable from natural gas pipeline gas from geologic sources so that product can then be injected in the pipeline it can be compressed or liquefied to become transportation fuel as renewable cng or renewable lng so since Patrick talked quite a bit about feed stocks and what that would mean economically for the benefits of building out these technologies I'm going to focus a little bit more on end use for the transportation side so that we can complement one another a little bit but also who is the renewable natural gas coalition we are a non-profit association we advocate for increased use of renewable natural gas from these cellulosic waste feed sources so that ultimately our current generation future generations will have increased access to domestic affordable reliable clean energies so the methane that's captured at these facilities has many many benefits Patrick mentioned some of those it reduces greenhouse gas benefit reduces greenhouse gas emissions and associated pollutants it provides a local source of energy that supports energy independence you're converting a waste product into a revenue source you're creating a renewable energy that replaces fossil fuels you are creating jobs as Patrick talked a lot about but you're also enhancing the local community image as innovative and sustainable now let's get into the transportation side and talk a little bit more about those environmental benefits now a CNG and LNG from renewable feed stocks are blended into our transportation infrastructure and transportation system it becomes drastically cleaner pretty fast switching vehicles to run on compressor liquefied natural gas from geologic sources already has emission benefits natural gas provides a 90% lower nitrous oxide emissions using a new near zero engine natural gas technology and a 99% socks reduction as compared to diesel now when you blend in renewable natural gas into that fuel mix it becomes even cleaner blending in 20% renewable renewable natural gas provides a 26 to 30% emissions benefit over diesel and using 100% renewable natural gas can provide carbon reductions over 80% and renewable natural gas from some feedstocks is even carbon negative meaning that it sequesters greenhouse gas in the product life cycle so now that we know how clean it is what is the demand like industry-wide and nationally well figures released in April by California Air Resources Board show that as of the end of 2015 50% of the natural gas fuel being consumed in California was from renewable feedstocks now what what this shows is that renewable natural gas is growth in that market is evidence that low carbon fuel standard in California is working to create markets and create production of cleaner fuels what does this look like when we're going out to the national scale that it's a little less certain the extent of R&G use nationally EIA sources indicate that between 15 to 35% of the natural gas vehicle fuel consumed in the country is from renewable feedstocks depending on which EIA data you look at but there is evidence that also shows that this industry and renewable natural gas transportation is growing at an incredible unprecedented unprecedented rate that is thanks in part to the renewable fuel standard in 2013 when EPA's phase two amendments to the renewable fuel standard renewable natural gas achieved cellulosic designation eligible for cellulosic RIN zone of the program at that point in 2000 in 2013 it was 25.9 million gallons or ethanol gallon equivalents being produced of this fuel 2014 was the pathway approval by the end of 2015 that had grown five-fold to almost a hundred forty million ethanol gallon equivalents produced last year under the program this equated to 98% of all the cellulosic biofuel registered under the renewable fuel standard so it does provide evidence that that program is also working as far as promoting cellulosic fuel growth current and future production rates look even stronger RNG production for transportation fuel is on pace to triple in volume by the end of 2018 from where it was in 2015 we're on track to reach 230 million gallons that EPA identified in 2016 under the renewable volume obligation in 2017 we anticipate over 350 million gallons above the current 312 gallon million gallon estimate the EPA has in the draft rule and we expect that to grow to over 450 million gallons in 2018 so how do we ensure that these resources get utilized as renewable natural gas Patrick talked a lot about the tax credits and those tax incentives are crucial we advocate for for tax parity but it's also really crucial that we protect these programs that our industry shows are working the low carbon fuel standard as well as the renewable fuel standard are integral to continuing to develop out the industry do a lot to the uncertainty and investors need that policy stability as Patrick was mentioning however if Congress does decide to open up and start amending pieces of the renewable fuel standard it's just critical that we ensure that the cellulosic provisions in in those policies that they remain in place and with that I think I will save the rest for questions I do have a lot of information as well on what it would mean to build out a lot of these feedstocks as Patrick was mentioning but we can save that for questions thanks thanks Marcus and I think it's also really important for people to understand the benefits that a lot of existing policies really are providing because many times there's kind of only one-sided information that's that's getting out with regard to that so I think that's a really really important point to make so we're now going to turn to Sarah Bixby who is the deputy executive director of solid of the solid waste association of North America also fondly known as swanna go ahead Sarah thanks I have an easier ask for you did anybody eat lunch today but if you had leftovers you've created food waste and my remarks today are going to focus on the policy implications and actually the infrastructure implications of food waste as a renewable energy source swanna is a professional association that means we have about 8500 people working in the industry you will interact with them as your garbage haulers as your recyclers at the local government level doing education as consultants building facilities and in each of those steps those folks are focused on trying to advance their practices away from just looking at waste as a waste and into looking at waste as a resource that we can use in a better way one of the ways that swanna focuses on using things in a better way is through our applied research foundation and they involve local governments corporations some of our chapters in determining which topics are coming up that will be of interest going forward to all of us in the future one of the recent things that they did in a report just released in April was a study on food waste diversion programs and their impacts on municipal solid waste systems that research began well before the EPA and the US Department of Agriculture released a food waste reduction goal of 50% by the year 2030 but the research adds a really interesting data set to how we're going to address that food waste goal going forward so from a waste management standpoint and for today's purposes the primary benefits of food waste recovery of managing your lunch leftovers include reducing landfill methane emissions and they include the potential to generate biogas that can be used to produce electricity so those benefits are very consistent with our goals of shifting toward more resource management and a sustainable use of resources but it's also important to acknowledge that shifting food waste from our existing systems into new processing technologies is going to affect the production of recovered energy from a lot of current programs nationally that includes 77 waste energy facilities and 650 landfill gas recovery projects already in place already well invested so there are about approximately 66 million tons of food waste a year that are lost or wasted in the United States we don't have nearly the capacity needed to meet a 50% goal given that quantity of food waste the federal goal that was announced established a hierarchy of technologies to address food waste reduction which begins with the idea of source reduction eat all of your ice cream don't throw it away let's feed hungry people you know feed animals and then it moves on to less preferred processing options such as recovering wasted food as a feedstock and ultimately disposing of it in a landfill or a waste energy facility as a waste we believe the swan that we can change how the food is managed and handled in our systems we have to direct more effort to feeding people and feeding animals we're not going to get anywhere near a 50% reduction if we don't address those steps but it's also unlikely that those steps alone will change food production or food distribution enough to get us to 50% and that means we're going to see the construction of additional processing facilities once food is considered a waste once we've thrown it away and it's in that disposal stream local governments working with their collection and processing partners have to have the ability to make local decisions it's great to set a national goal for food waste diversion but we cannot accompany that with a national standard for how local governments address waste diversion each of them each city and county each processor has a existing resource existing infrastructure their own needs that they have to take into consideration to develop an optimal recovery system encompassing all of those steps for them and it's because of the diversity of our communities nationwide that I can sit here and agree with Patrick about anaerobic digestion you know agree that we need to look at compressed natural gas vehicles probably talk about some landfill gas I mean all of those things fit into our integrated systems to address food waste and other types of waste going into an energy stream our research report focused on the disposal land primarily of the processing and disposal systems composting incineration and landfilling most of the available waste stream can be handled in composting facilities and ad facilities but we don't have enough of them so we're going to have to develop them data from EPA said that there only there was only 4% of our food waste processed in a composting facility in 2013 ad is probably the preferred system but it's not very much in use in the United States yet for waste and it's currently more expensive so we're going to have to develop more markets markets for finished compost markets for biogas and the biogas in particular is going to have to compete with petroleum with natural gas and with other fuels for more established renewable energy sources many of which already receive preferential tax treatment so we support the extension of the tax credits beyond December of this year for municipal solid waste and also for landfill gas we also again reiterate that the local governments have to have the ability and take the responsibility to make decisions on food waste diversion for their local systems it has to be local government decisions to implement a national food waste reduction goal thank you great thanks Sarah so rounding this whole discussion out is Kevin Krauss-Harr who is the Vice President for government affairs and chapter operations with the National Waste and Recycling Association thank you good afternoon I feel like we should have a catalog or a phone book as get up to the table here does anybody remember what a phone book was exactly good afternoon again my name is Kevin Krauss-Harr with the National Waste and Recycling Association our member companies represent that well we our association represents the private sector side the waste and recycling business we estimate that the segment of the industry represented by our companies process collects and processes probably 70% of the recycling that is consumer recycling in the United States and obviously the waste disposal system is a very important part of the business model our companies as large as waste management Republic as I was coming up here behind the cannon building here this morning traffic was blocked by a big progressive truck that was steering into one of the buildings side by behind the cannon progressive is now a part of waste connections our companies are involved in not just waste collection and processing recycling we're involved in many of the segments of renewables I believe our member companies or we have representatives and probably all four these that all three of the other associations that are here today so there obviously is a lot of exploration going on a lot of new technologies and I would like to say that that what I would talk about too is is renewed technology but everybody says well landfill landfills are been around for years landfills have been around for years but the technology that has been going into and the current way that that landfills are built are cited are approved is certainly advanced technology that that maybe didn't exist several years ago landfill operation is generally administered and regulated at the federal federal level by rickra the resource conservation recovery and recovery act modern landfills are high tech they're carefully monitored with containment systems both for leachate which the liquid that flows into the two landfills but also emissions that that are also produced into the year landfills are also the source of methane as was described in the technical process that is available is that is the technical process you've already heard about so I won't go into that but I can say that the EPA estimates that there are about 640 landfills throughout the United States that produce methane it's captured it's it's processed and it has a several uses so of this there's 640 current landfills that that process meth methane into a clean burning fuels and electricity but there are also about 400 potential landfills that could be converted to methane production should that be come available EPA estimates in addition that the electricity produced by renewable energy from methane produced in landfills can power about 1.2 million homes throughout the United States and we estimate that that energy derived both in in electricity and in other uses is as as Marcus described also account for about 5% of renewable energy that is 5% of renewable energy sources today comes from from landfills so in addition to putting electricity into the system through the electricity providers there are other uses as as Marcus described and that is the the methane can also be converted to compressed natural gas liquid natural gas and used to power a power a growing fleet of the companies the vehicles that are coming around to your neighborhoods and picking up your recyclables and your waste are also being powered on them more and more by compressed natural gas and so some of the things that we would ask for as far as the Congress is concerned is certainly the renewal of the renewable gas tax credit the ITC which is up at the end of this year also that are set to expire the end of 2016 are the renewal the tax credits for using compressed natural gas in vehicles the CNG vehicle tax credit which is a tax credit based on the amount of fuel replaced through regular diesel and then the other tax credit is the tax credit for the installation the building and the maintenance of compressed natural gas refueling facilities which are obviously so important to making sure that that we're able to maintain those fleets and and keep them moving I was surprised to learn not too long ago that the Goddard that 31 buildings at the Goddard Space Center are now powered by or heated and air conditioned because the landfill gas there's a BMW plant if you're driving just north of Spartan Greenville Spartanburg I don't know if there any South Carolina residents here but you see that brand new big BMW production facility that's also being powered by liquid bike electricity and and power from methane from a landfill about 10 miles away they actually built a separate pipeline 10 miles from the landfill to that facility to assist in power production and one of our member companies called Southside landfill in Indianapolis Indiana actually has a landfill just outside of Indianapolis which methane produced in that facility goes to a greenhouse which last time I had talked to with one of the representatives back in December he was just getting on a truck and getting ready to go out and deliver poinsettias which were produced in that greenhouse so there are lots of exciting opportunities out there again you've heard about all of the fantastic new technologies while landfills have been around for a long time but certainly the technology the investment in technology to make them more efficient to to assist in in production and converting more landfills to to energy production could go a long way in solving our processes again our members want to be engaged and are engaged in in all of the technologies you've heard talked about today and it's exciting to have this opportunity to share some of these experiences with all of you great thank you and I must say it's exciting to hear about all this stuff and all the businesses being generated all over the country and that can still be generated because it's I I personally just love the whole idea of using everything so that we don't waste that so that we don't waste things and so I think it's so exciting in terms of looking at all these cool applications and what we all need to know are more and more of the great stories and applications that are coming out so and I forgot to mention Carol I'm sorry that everything I know about landfill and waste energy through landfills is in this two-page paper so I've got plenty of copies up here that you can take everything that you know everything I know is in this paper yesterday this was eight pages today it's two so thank you very very much we really appreciate it and make sure that you visit those books okay thank you