Arizona judge rules renewable energy credits don't include Waste To Energy plants
- July 19, 2013
- By Kerri Jansen
An Arizona county judge has ruled renewable energy credits should not be given to projects that burn trash to produce energy.
The July 16 ruling ended a lawsuit filed last September by the Sierra Club that challenged a decision by the Arizona Corporation Commission, a five-member group that regulates the state's utilities, that an energy-from-trash project qualified as renewable energy.
The Sierra Club argued the state's renewable energy standard is not intended to include trash incinerators, Tacoma, Wash.-based The News Tribune reported.
"This decision is good news for clean renewable energy such as solar and wind," Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon chapter, said in the article. "Promoting polluting and dated technologies such as burning trash to produce electricity would be a step backward for Arizona's renewable energy programs."
Commissioner Bob Stump was reportedly disappointed in the decision.
"In spite of the widespread use of this mainstream technology throughout the world, it has been shamelessly demagogued as 'dirty trash burning' by those who believe it's a threat to politically-favored forms of renewable energy," he said in the article.
Commission spokeswoman Rebecca Wilder told reporters the panel may take some time to decide their next action.
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