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Boise, Idaho • A businessman wants to build two trash-powered energy plants in the state using a process called thermal gasification that he says is cleaner and more efficient than incinerating trash to produce energy.
"People say they don't want an incinerator in their backyard. That's good, because that's not what we make," Lloyd Mahaffey, of Eagle, told The Idaho Statesman. "This technology is gasification, not incineration."
Mahaffey, the CEO of Dynamis Energy, said he wants to build a plant in Ada County in southwest Idaho and another in Clark County in eastern Idaho.
The two plants could power 10,000 homes by converting 250 tons of trash a day. He said the trash is heated in a chamber without oxygen, breaking it down into gas that can then be burned to produce energy.
About 95 percent of the trash is destroyed in the process, he said.
"Burying our waste is the second-dumbest thing humans do," said Mahaffey, noting No. 1 is always up for debate. "Every ton of waste stream we process is one ton the county doesn't have to bury."
He said there's more interest in such plants because landfills are filling up and it's expensive to build new ones, technology has advanced to make trash-to-energy plants more viable, and there are government incentives for renewable energy.
Dynamis Vice President Pete Johnson said the technology the company plans to use leapfrogs earlier attempts at turning trash into power.
Mahaffey said most of those use older technology that requires so much electricity there's little net gain in electricity produced, while the new technology overcomes that problem.