November 28, 2005 — For Immediate Release

Minneapolis, Minnesota - Environmental Information (EI) Limited has released its annual report on the commercial hazardous waste energy recovery market. The report is part of a series on hazardous waste markets offered by EI’s subscription-based consulting service, the EI Digest. EI reports annually on key sectors in the hazardous waste management industry, including commercial hazardous waste incineration, fuels blending, solvent recovery and land disposal.

Commercial energy recovery firms are manufacturers that accept hazardous waste from other manufacturers as a source of fuel. Examples of types of manufacturers using hazardous waste fuels are aggregate plants, cement plants and sulfuric acid regeneration plants. Overall the commercial hazardous waste energy recovery sector has undergone a significant adjustment in capacity. The North American sector has 21 facilities. Closures have meant that these manufacturing facilities have had to revert to traditional fuel sources and/or other alternative fuels (e.g. tires).

Until the recent recession, there was a steadily increasing demand for commercial energy recovery. The peak demand for hazardous waste incineration occurred in 2000 when nearly 1.3 million tons were combusted in North America. The demand in 2004 was approximately 15% lower at 1.1 million tons. A variety of factors have contributed to the decline ranging from the transfer of US manufacturing overseas to shifts by manufacturers to solvents with less fuel value.

Demand for the sector’s service are likely to increase in the near future as captive combustion facilities are finally subject to deadlines to upgrade their emissions to the same standards that were previously imposed on the commercial facilities. A captive energy recovery facility is one that utilizes only its own waste as a source of fuel. Many of the captive combustion units are older, smaller units. It is speculated that many of these smaller units will continue to operate without making improvements until forced to close by regulatory deadlines.

The EI Digest is a subscription-based market consulting service of Environmental Information Limited. For further information on this and other EI Digest reports, please call 952-831-2473 or visit www.envirobiz.com.