Anchorage Considers Waste‑to‑Energy Plant to Revamp City Utilities

Anchorage’s city council is quietly moving forward with a plan that could change the way the Alaskan metropolis handles its garbage – and, maybe, its electricity supply. The idea is simple on the surface: build a waste‑to‑energy (WTE) plant right next to the existing regional landfill, burn the trash, capture the heat and turn it into power.

It sounds almost like a plot twist in a sustainability handbook. The proposed facility would be a massive incinerator with a modest power‑generation unit tacked on. When the garbage goes up in flames, the heat would boil water, spin a turbine and produce somewhere between 20 and 30 megawatts – enough to light up roughly twenty‑thousand homes.

For a city that’s already fretting about a future natural‑gas supply crunch, the prospect of an extra, locally‑grown power source is tempting. “There’s a lot of momentum,” says Kelli Toth, director of Solid Waste Services, who has been shepherding the project for a few years. The momentum, she notes, stems from a 2020 feasibility study that called the plant both practical and “desirable.”

Location, as they say, is everything. After a series of site‑selection workshops, officials have zeroed in on the footprint of the Anchorage Regional Landfill. That answer pleased local representative Jared Goecker, whose Eagle River district sits just a short drive away. “If there’s anything Chugiak‑Eagle River is famous for, it’s being fiercely territorial,” he told the Assembly’s Infrastructure, Enterprise and Utilities Oversight Committee, but he also urged the project team to keep the community in the loop.

The timeline is still fuzzy. The municipality hopes to flesh out design details, environmental permits, financing and community outreach over the next year, with a financial plan slated for the Assembly in May 2027. If the green light stays steady, construction could kick off around 2030 and the plant might be humming by 2032.

Beyond power, the plant promises a handful of other perks. Anchorage buries hundreds of thousands of tons of waste each year; the landfill not only takes up space, it leaks methane and other contaminants into the air and soil. By burning the trash, the WTE system could slash the volume that ends up in the ground by about 90 %, stretching the life of the landfill considerably.

Even the city’s sewage incinerator could get a break. The current Asplund plant at Point Woronzof treats biosolids – the sludge from toilets – by burning it. Those same biosolids could be fed into the new WTE furnace, cutting the need for a costly replacement of the 40‑year‑old sewage incinerator, a project that’s estimated to run up to $75 million.

Critics will no doubt ask about emissions. The proposal includes a robust filtration system to scrub gases, and a strict monitoring regime would keep pollutants in check. Metals extracted from the ash could be recycled, while the remaining ash would still need a safe burial site.

Anchorage isn’t stepping into unknown territory entirely. Across the lower 48 there are about 65 waste‑to‑energy plants, and many more overseas. The feasibility study even sent Toth on a tour of six U.S. facilities – mostly in Florida – where she saw first‑hand how proximity to a landfill can slash transportation costs and simplify operations.

“I’m excited for it,” Toth says. “Waste‑to‑energy will fundamentally transform how we think about trash and power in Anchorage.” Whether the city’s residents will share that optimism remains to be seen, but the conversation is now well under way.