Call it a hot solution

Garbage, not coal or oil, fuels a growing plant that has a colossal task each day.

By ANDREW MEACHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published January 25, 2008

---

They call it "exotic" fuel. But the moldering mountains of garbage at Covanta Hillsborough don't look, or smell, very exotic. One of a dozen renewable-energy plants in Florida, Covanta converts garbage into 47 megawatts of electricity at 69,000 volts, 24 hours a day. 

 Covanta Energy, which runs the plant under a contract with Hillsborough County, has operated the facility at 350 N Falkenburg Road for 20 years. Gov. Charlie Crist stopped by recently to hobnob about renewable energy. Europeans like it, too, since they have less land to work with. Now the plant is expanding to make room for another 600-ton furnace. 

Every ton of garbage burned at a waste-to-energy plant produces energy equivalent to half a ton of coal or one barrel of oil and saves precious landfill space.

By the numbers:

1,200 tons of waste processed each day at Covanta Hillsborough plant

4 to 5 tons of garbage produced by average American household each year.

90 percent reduction in volume of trash during waste-to-energy process

30,000 homes powered by Covanta Hillsborough plant

630 pounds of greenhouse gases prevented for each ton of garbage burned for energy

2 percent of U.S. electricity produced by waste-to-energy plants

Sources: Covanta Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Times research