Updated July 27, 2021
Dear Colleagues,
You may recall that we postponed our Fall 2020 EEC/WTERT bi-Annual Conference to this coming Fall 2021. Since that postponement there have been a few developments that require us to again postpone our meeting to Fall 2022. Currently, there is no firm new date but we are excited to share that the conference will occur in the Fall of 2022 as an in-person event. We have delayed this decision for as long as possible to incorporate the most updated and current information. New York has recently lifted all COVID-19 restrictions across all commercial and social settings, and several large (>800 people) events are set to take place here in NYC in the near future. We will monitor these upcoming events to provide us with some insight on the ability and willingness of people to travel and interact with colleagues from around the world. City College is also set to go to an in-person course structure for the upcoming school year, and by the end of Fall 2021 we will know how well that performed.
In addition, there have been some recent developments in the U.S. regarding interest in using MSW for energy and materials recovery. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has announced funding to several teams focused on advancing waste-to-energy technology. These teams are a part of ARPA-E’s Monetizing Innovative Disposal Applications and Solutions (MIDAS) and Waste into X (WiX) topics. MIDAS teams are developing technologies for the recovery and reclamation of critical materials (CMs) and other valuable elements from Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI). WiX projects are working to advance the improvement of the physical or chemical properties of MSWI ash into valuable products. Additional information on these projects can be found on the ARPA-E website. Similar efforts are also being developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). These projects are just getting underway this year; therefore, we anticipate that our postponement will yield some abstract submissions from that program enabling us to expand the presentation and networking.
Finally, we are committed to ensure that we can have the international participation that our conference normally enjoys. For example, in 2018 there were a total of 12 countries represented that spanned several time zones (Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Korea, Sudan, UK and US). Additionally, an important component of our conference is the person-to-person interaction that allows attendees to make new connections and collaborations that normally would not occur in other settings. That interaction cannot happen in a virtual environment and the spontaneous discussions on the scientific topics also cannot occur via an on-line format.
Therefore, please look toward to Fall 2022 to be in New York City for the bi-annual EEC/WTERT conference. We will have a new call for abstracts and will provide updated information throughout the year.
Sincerely,
The EEC Team