New Voices: Michelle Brown

With a bachelor’s degree in energy, business and finance from Penn State University and past roles in electricity/natural gas brokerage and procurement, Michelle Brown says she never expected to find herself in the waste industry.

After moving to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for her first job out of college, she piqued an interest in the local solid waste department, highlighting its strong presence in the community and core values as factors. Brown later attended a tour of the county’s waste-to-energy facility, a method of energy creation she was largely unfamiliar with.

“I took a day off work to tour the waste-to-energy facility in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania, and I was just blown away,” she says. “I thought it was so cool. In Lancaster and for the LCSWMA [Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority], waste-to-energy is an important piece of … our integrated system and philosophy of managing waste.”

Years later, a connection at LCSWMA reached out to Brown about an open recycling commodity manager position. After three years in that role, Brown’s position evolved to include energy management when complexities in the department’s renewable energy markets necessitated a more concerted effort.

In the following interview with Waste Today, Brown discusses how her role with LCSWMA has adapted to an increased focus on waste-to-energy.

"I was given a seat at the table, so to speak, from a young age. That helped build my confidence in being in a position where I had to make decisions.”

Waste Today (WT): Can you tell me about the waste-to-energy space in Pennsylvania?

Michelle Brown (MB): Pennsylvania is a really interesting state when you talk about energy as a whole. It’s the second-largest natural gas-producing state, it’s the third-largest electricity-producing state and the second-largest net exporter of energy in the U.S. Pennsylvania has six waste-to-energy facilities, and LCSWMA owns two.

When the first facility came online, it was under a 25-year agreement with the utility. The utility said, “We’ll buy all the power that this facility generates, you don’t have to do anything. We’ll just pay you a flat fee, and that’s it.” So, that was the extent of LCSWMA’s involvement for many years on the energy side of things. When the utility decided not to renew that agreement, … suddenly, we were thrown into the wholesale power market, and we had to really learn what that meant.

Because we’re waste to energy we’re classified as a Tier 2 renewable energy resource in Pennsylvania, so we generate renewable energy credits, which can be bought and sold. It’s added a lot of complexity to the energy side of things, which is part of the reason why my role exists.

WT: How did you integrate your past experience into your new role?

MB: What makes this role unique is that it often relies on a lot of skills [like] problem-solving and critical thinking. In any community managing waste, [there] is not one solution. Early on in my career, even before I was at LCSWMA, I think one of the things that benefited me was [working] at a small company, and everyone [wearing] multiple hats. I was given a seat at the table, so to speak, from a young age. That helped build my confidence in being in a position where I had to make decisions.

A lot of that translates to what I do today. I do a lot of looking at our revenue streams and financial pictures, and if we’re not hitting our budget targets, [I have to] understand what’s happening. … Is this something in an operational capacity that’s happening at the plant? Are there things on the horizon that we need to be looking at from a regulatory perspective? It’s pulling from these multiple places to get a grasp of the whole picture.