MANITOWOC (NBC 26) — Manitowoc will soon begin using renewable fuel in its power plants.
- Troy Adams, director of Manitowoc Public Utilities, says the plant hopes to switch entirely to renewable energy by 2026.
- The new fuel is made from paper and plastic that ends up in landfill.
- The program diverts 18,000 tons of waste from landfills each month.
(The following is a transcript of the entire broadcast)
There are huge mountains of coal in front of Manitowoc’s largest power plant, but they will not be used for much longer.
Troy Adams, director of Manitowoc Public Utilities, explains the change.
“It’s a direct replacement for coal or petroleum coke, so we can run that through our boiler,” Adams said. “In a sense, our boiler becomes a renewable power plant.”
According to Adams, the new fuel, consisting of small pellets, is made from clean industrial waste or from paper and plastic that would otherwise end up in landfill.
“Over the entire life cycle of this product, we achieve a 55% reduction in emissions impact,” said Adams.
He says this will be achieved by keeping material out of landfills and limiting the waste generated by coal combustion.
“So at both ends of the process we are reducing the amount of waste that would otherwise end up in landfills,” said Adams.
He says the new fuel is also much cheaper than coal.
To see how it works, I accompanied Chief Operations Officer Jeremy Fischer on a tour of the plant.
“We need to look at ways to make this system capable of delivering larger quantities of material,” Fischer said. “The next phase of this project is to look at improvements in the way we handle our fuels.”
The new fuel program will result in 18,000 tons of waste being diverted from a landfill each month, which Adams says would be the equivalent of filling the Lambeau Field basin by at least 30 feet.
“It feels really good,” Fischer said. “It’s a challenge, it’s something the community expects from us. It’s what our consumers expect, and it works with the power plant too.”
One benefit of the project is that the fossil fuels will be imported from across the country, but the renewable energy will come from Appleton and Green Bay, keeping the money in northeast Wisconsin.
