Enthusiasm to zap municipal trash into energy confronts some realities

No one ever said it was easier to zap garbage into energy than to bury it in a landfill.

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency board was reminded of that fact on Tuesday as the head of a Florida company, Plasma Power LLC, provided a forthright update on the hurdles that confront the company and its plan to build a $120-million garbage-fueled power plant somewhere in the Marion and Cedar Rapids area.

Jim Juranitch, president/CEO of Plasma Power, told the board about the complications of financing such a plant using the firm's plasma-arc technology now that a federal program of renewable energy grants, one of which the company had hoped to obtain, has now ended.

As importantly, Plasma Power needs to secure an agreement with a utility to purchase power that a plasma-arc plant would produce, and the company has not secured such an agreement, though it thought it had been close in months past, Juranitch reported.

He and Rich Tarrant, Plasma Power's chairman, said they met with Alliant Energy representatives on Tuesday morning, and Juranitch told the Solid Waste Agency board he thought the two companies were “close” to reaching an agreement. He added, though, that he had thought such was the case in the past with another utility, but an agreement didn't materialize, he said.

Juranitch and Tarrant also were in Cedar Rapids to see what if any financial commitment Plasma Power might obtain from Cedar Rapids City Hall.

“No, we're spent,” Juranitch said Cedar Rapids city officials told him.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, a Solid Waste Agency board member who earlier had met with the Plasma Power representatives, asked Juranitch if he also had approached the city of Marion – which does not want to see any future expansion of the landfill on its border and so has been a strong supporter of Plasma Power's waste-to-energy plans -- to take on debt for the project. The city of Marion, which has provided some project support, says it can't take on debt for the project either, Juranitch answered.

Plasma Power's Cedar Rapids-Marion project has been in the works for a couple of years, and Juranitch emphasized that the company “has not given up” on it. At the same time, Juranitch said there is a possibility that the company's first plasma-arc power production plant could be built in a market other than Cedar Rapids and Marion. Tarrant said that if the company isn't able to build here in the next two years, “we'd probably move on."

Cedar Rapids and Marion have seemed to be vying for the plant, and several possible sites for the plant have been mentioned. Those have included the shuttered Terex plant at 16th Street and F Avenue NE and property owned by Rick Stickle in the industrial area around Cedar Lake near the Cargill and Quaker plants, the hospitals and Coe College.

Juranitch on Tuesday said the Terex site was out as a prospect, though he and Tarrant said a site close to Alliant's Prairie Creek Generating Station, 3300 C St. SW, would be the kind of site that could work for a plasma-arc power plant.

Cedar Rapids City Council member Justin Shields, a Solid Waste Agency board member, asked Juranitch about possible sites, and Juranitch said the site will be dictated by the company that purchases the power.

The city of Marion has promised Plasma Power that it will take responsibility to get the plasma-arc plant the garbage it needs, though Juranitch said he would return to the Solid Waste Agency to talk to it more about garbage if and when the day approached for a plant to be built.

He said the proposed plant in the Cedar Rapids and Marion area will produce 56 megawatts thermal of renewable energy.

Plasma Power continues to refine its technology at a demonstration plant in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and it is working with a dozen possible customers, including the nation of the Bahamas, Juranitch said.