Culture
How Chicago Turns Sewage Into Power
Chicago’s wastewater authority plans to slash its energy bill by using bacteria to convert sewage into natural gas.
There are a lot of things in the 1.2 billion gallons that pour through the world’s largest water-treatment plant every day: grime swept off Chicago sidewalks, sewage scoured from thousands of miles of pipes—and enough energy to cut an annual $50 million electricity bill to zero.
That’s if engineers at Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District can achieve their goal to become energy neutral in the next eight years. The public agency has pledged, by 2023, to slash its energy consumption and produce whatever remaining power it needs onsite, becoming the largest wastewater treatment authority in the country to do so.