The possibility that the trash-burning power plant in Penacook may get its third owner in four years appears to reflect global patterns of the huge waste-to-energy industry rather than the recent New Hampshire debate over electricity prices from biomass plants.
If federal regulators agree, the seven-story Wheelabrator plant that has been burning municipal waste to create electricity since 1989 would be sold by one large private-equity firm to another large private-equity firm, ending Wheelabrator’s plans to go public. The sale could happen as soon as the first quarter of 2019.
It’s unknown whether the change will make any difference to the Penacook facility, which is a relatively small part of Wheelabrator’s waste-to-energy holdings. Wheelabrator owns 19 such plants in the United States and the United Kingdom. The firm declined to comment Thursday about the plant’s future.
“Over the last few years under ECP’s ownership, we have enhanced our core business here in the United States and further developed on our strong pipeline of additional waste-to-energy projects in the United Kingdom. We are confident that the long term support from MIP will allow Wheelabrator to continue to operate as a trusted and reliable partner for its customers and continue to execute on our growth agenda,” Wheelabrator Technologies President & CEO Bob Boucher said in a published statement.
Wheelabrator Technologies is a Portsmouth-based firm. It was part of Waste Management, a Texas-based waste services firm, until 2014, when it was sold to Energy Capital Partners, an investment firm. This week Energy Capital Partners said it agreed to sell Wheelabrator Technologies to Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, also a worldwide investment firm, for an undisclosed price.
While the Penacook plant is a small part of Wheelabrator it looms much larger in New Hampshire, where it is the only power plant that burns municipal waste. Wheelabrator shut the only other such plant, in Claremont, several years ago.
The Penacook facility takes trash from more than 20 communities as well as some commercial trash haulers. It can burn some construction debris each winter under a legal change made in 2014.
According to DES data, the plant burns around 190,000 tons of waste annually. The plant generates up to 14 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 14,000 homes, although 1.5 megawatts are used to operate the plant.
It has long been the focus of environmental debate about such facilities. Waste-to-energy supporters say they keep landfills from filling up and create something valuable from trash, while opponents say they produce air pollution and concentrate waste into toxic ash. The Penacook plant generates about 52,000 tons of ash annually that is taken to a Wheelabrator landfill in Shrewsbury, Mass.
More recently, the plant was part of the contentious debate over whether to continue paying extra for electricity generated by six power plants that burn wood. The governor vetoed that idea in Senate Bill 365, which included the Wheelabrator facility, but the Legislature narrowly overrode the veto to support the logging and wood-products industry. Since utilities must continue to buy the incinerator’s power at above-market prices, that greatly improves the facility’s economic future.
According to data from ISO-New England, burning waste generated about 3.1 percent of all electricity in 2017, virtually the same amount as was generated by wind or by burning wood, and three times as much as was generated by solar power.
One drawback for the Penacook plant is that it does not have a good way to pipe waste heat generated during the production of electricity and sell that heat to other companies. That system, known as combined heat and power or CHP, is the wave of the future for biomass and trash power plants because it increases the amount of money they can make. Wheelabrator has been touting the CHP aspects of waste-to-energy plants it is building in Great Britain.
Globally, the economic future of the waste-to-energy industry appears bright, especially in the developing world. The business reporting firm Visiongate estimates that $15 billion will be spent on new waste-to-energy facilities around the world this year, although that includes a number of smaller technologies as well as burning trash for power and heat.
Grand View Research, a California business-analysis firm, estimates that sales in the global industry of burning waste for energy will grow from $20 billion to $30 billion by 2024. This does not include so-called biological waste-to-energy, such as burning methane generated by decaying material in landfills.
“Increasing domestic and industrial waste has prompted governments across various regions to promote energy generation from waste,” the company wrote in a recent analysis. “Favorable government regulations in the form of tax benefits and financial incentives have had a positive influence on the growth. Growing environmental concerns for the use of non-renewable resources is expected to further complement the growth.”
The Wheelabrator sale is subject to approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313, dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
