By James T. Caldwell Ph.D.

People who see the depletion of oil and fossil fuels point out the need to conserve and live within our means. Environmentalists note that fossil fuels damage the ability of our environment to sustain us. Farmers hope they can grow energy crops to produce ethanol and biodiesel. Oilmen tell us that there is still plenty of oil to be discovered (while they look for alternative fuels to sell us). Nuclear power depends on uranium and hasn’t solved its waste problem. Sewage and manure wastes increase air and water problems. Each of these is valuable information, but none of them tell the whole story.

Disastrous floods destroyed ancient river valley civilizations that failed to maintain their flora, fauna and watersheds. The story of Noah’s Arc is one of many attempts to teach ancient people to maintain complex ecosystems. We have better science today and global economies, but we haven’t learned to maintain the global ecosystem. Today’s energy challenges illustrate deficiencies in 20th century economic systems that promote waste to maximize profits. They produce toxins and greenhouse gases, deplete resources and degrade watersheds. They have given us melting glaciers, more acidic oceans, mercury-contaminated fish and land lost to waste dumps and manure lagoons. We need new fuels, less waste and a new economic model for the 21st century!

Can we create systems that will survive and thrive? Can we admit that our inherited systems and beliefs are not perfect? Can we separate the strengths from weaknesses in what we, and others believe to create collaborative belief systems and solutions that adjust when we see new evidence? What is true in one context is not always true in another. For example, manure fertilizes some crops, but too much will poison them. The small family farm is efficient within its limits but cannot feed large populations. Agribusiness and wastewater treatment plants support larger populations by saving energy in food production and manure management but they fail to fully reuse biosolid waste. They digest biosolids waste, their methane, sanitize the residue and reduce its volume, but they don’t fully reuse the waste. There is an opportunity here!

In nature, neither matter nor energy can be destroyed; they can only be transformed. An ecosystem (like a family) remains healthy only when a dynamic balance is maintained among its parts -- each developing its abilities and each nurturing the others. When we export waste we pay for transportation, use fossil fuels, and pollute the air. We pay again to import energy and resources! Once we understand how waste from one process can become raw material for another, we can invent processes that recover, recycle and reuse waste locally. In fact, old technologies that do this are improving. For example, thermal conversion can capture energy and resources in biosolids more cleanly and efficiently than methane digestion. In fact, it can reclaim any waste containing hydrocarbons while generating more heat, steam and electricity than needed for the recycling of metals, glass, and paper. Instead of releasing the gases, the gases are sterilized, cleaned and reprocessed in biorefineries to produce fuels, fertilizers, and industrial gases. Gasification and biorefineries require larger volumes than typical biodigesters but they have no waste, they are self-powered, they help reclaim other wastes and they can be highly profitable. They can complement biodigesters and waste water treatment processes. When we add them to energy conservation, wind, wave, water and geothermal power, we can significantly conserve fossil fuels and reduce the pollution caused by fossil fuels and manure.

Manure power cannot replace fossil fuels, but it can clean up waste and provide cleaner power and cleaner fuels. No one source of energy should be allowed to create an unsustainable imbalance again! Let’s create a healthy mix of tools, fuels and knowledge. Let’s collaborate to efficiently integrate complementary processes to improve our personal health, the health of our economies and the health of our global ecosystem.

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James T. Caldwell, Ph.D., is a systems engineer who has taught university courses on the Politics of Energy and the Environment, Comparative Politics and World History at Iona College, New Rochelle, NY. He was Fellow at the U.C. Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies and Assistant Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He is currently President of E3 Regenesis Solutions where he works to solve waste and energy problems. He is a member of the California Biomass Collaborative, of Sustainable San Mateo County and of the San Francisco Bay Area Relocalization Assessment Project.