Back in 2011 when Maryland classified trash incineration as “renewable energy” – elevating it to the same status as solar and wind and subsidizing it to the tune of millions of dollars per year – two new waste-to-energy facilities were being proposed for the state.

Eventually, these incinerator projects, including one proposed less than a mile from a South Baltimore school, fell through in the face of community opposition and, perhaps, inadequate financing.

But the incineration subsidy remained, benefiting existing facilities like Baltimore’s BRESCO plant and surviving more than a decade of opposition by environmental advocates and neighborhood groups.

It stood until yesterday, the last day of the legislative session, when the General Assembly voted to eliminate trash incineration from the Renewable Energy Portfolio, effectively ending the subsidy.

“Me and my fellow community members in South Baltimore can breathe just a little easier knowing we will no longer pay trash incinerators to pollute our air,” said Carlos Sanchez, Youth Outreach Specialist with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust.

Sanchez recalled the persistence of his group and others, as bills they lobbied year after year in Annapolis died.

“We made our voices heard for over a decade explaining that burning limited natural resources is not clean energy and we have been heard,” he said.

During last year’s failed effort, the groups pointed to the scope of the subsidy baked into state law.

Maryland utilities, required by the state to help fund renewable energy, spent approximately $100 million subsidizing trash incinerators between 2012 and 2022, a recent study showed. These costs are basically passed along to residents through their utility bills.

New Hampshire-based WIN Waste Innovations, which operates the the BRESCO incinerator in South Baltimore, received $4.2 million through the program in 2022, Sanchez’ group noted.

Eliminating that subsidy is “fiscally smart,” advocates said today while celebrating their win.

“This correction of state policy will stop Maryland electricity ratepayers wasting millions of dollars a year on something that just doesn’t deliver what the Renewable Portfolio Standard was meant to provide: clean, renewable energy,” said Jennifer Kunze, Maryland Program Director with Clean Water Action.

“It will also help to support the development of Zero Waste infrastructure by making it easier for composting, reuse and recycling, and other healthier solid waste management practices to compete without fighting uphill against state subsidies supporting the worst solid waste option,” Kunze said in a prepared statement.

She pointed to a study that found incinerators emit more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of electricity they put on the grid than any other power source, even coal plants.

The BRESCO plant – its towering emissions stack a Baltimore landmark along I-95 for 40 years – is the city’s largest source of industrial air pollution and a major emitter of nitrogen oxides (NOx).

Incinerators are also major sources of health-harming air emissions including dioxins, lead, mercury, nitrogen and sulfur oxides and particulate matter.

Powerful Ally

Last fall, advocates had reason to believe their long-sought victory was in sight.

That’s when Senate President Bill Ferguson, who represents the Westport area where the incinerator is located, announced plans to introduce legislation to remove waste incineration from Maryland’s renewable portfolio standard, which determines what energy sources the state can count to meet certain clean energy mandates.

“Since being elected senator for the 46th Legislative District, I’ve become increasingly concerned about emissions from the BRESCO incinerator as a public health and environmental justice issue for surrounding neighborhoods,” Ferguson said at the time.

Earlier in the year, when Ferguson became general counsel of the renewable energy company CI Renewables, he was asked about potential conflicts of interest.

In his position with the Baltimore-based company, he told Maryland Matters, he’ll be mostly focused on “transactional work” rather than lobbying or making policy decisions.

Despite Ferguson’s support, backers for a time feared that the 2025 bill to demote incineration might again be doomed when it stalled in committee. WIN Waste and other industry representatives were, as always, lobbying hard against it.

The company in recent years has touted millions of dollars in upgrades meant to reduce air pollution. Company officials have argued that the state credits support a Maryland business and dozens of jobs and that burning waste could be better for the climate than transporting it longer distances to a landfill.

But in the end, the bill to end the subsidy was salvaged by tucking it into the larger Next Generation Energy Act, part of a package of energy related bills passed in Annapolis this year.

Political Windshift

If the machinations of Maryland politics are what ended the incineration subsidy, it’s fitting since the same process created it.

In 2011, then-Governor Martin O’Malley signed the bill to make trash incineration a Tier 1 renewable energy like wind, solar and geothermal.

Pushing for the change was the Albany-based company Energy Answers International, which sought to locate a trash-burning facility in the industrial Fairfield area near Curtis Bay.

Under the permit that Energy Answers was granted by the state, it would be allowed to burn garbage, chopped-up tires and car parts – 4,000 tons of waste a day – and emit toxic particulates, including 240 pounds of mercury a year.

Fighting the plan doggedly was a coalition of environmental groups, community members and students from Ben Franklin High School, some of whom were at one point arrested for taking part in a sit-in action at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) headquarters.

On the other side of the issue were elected officials who sang the project’s praises – and reaped rewards in the form of generous campaign contributions.

• Poised to battle climate change in Paris, mayor sidesteps incinerator in Baltimore (1/2/15)

On the same day that O’Malley indicated his support for the trash-incineration subsidy, for example, the company contributed $100,000 to the O’Malley-led Democratic Governors Association. His own campaign account also received $9,000 from the company, The Brew’s review of 2010-2011 online state records showed.

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s campaign committee picked up $1,500 as she was heading into the 2010 mayoral election.

“This is truly a great day in Baltimore,” Rawlings-Blake declared at a 2010 kick-off event the company organized.

“This project is a national model for green renewable energy, and I’m proud, really proud, to have this project in Baltimore City,” she added, standing next to Energy Answers official. U.S. Congressman C.A. (Dutch) Ruppersberger and O’Malley.

This year it was a different story.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s office testified on behalf of the legislation to strip away the incineration subsidy.

And the City Council chimed in with a resolution declaring that the change would “ensure that Marylanders are not subsidizing energy plants that harm the environment and public health.”