From hockey to trash to electricity… curious?
A couple of weeks ago I had a post about the various companies out there promoting waste-to-energy technologies. I have a feature this morning in the Toronto Star that looks at a particular company and technology that has just been approved for a 75-tonne a day demonstration facility in Ottawa. The company behind this proposed facility is Plasco Energy Group, and its CEO — former Ottawa Citizens NHL hockey team owner Rod Bryden — believes his company’s plasma-arc waste-to-energy system could handle the 800,000 tonnes a year of solid waste generated in Toronto and surrounding areas. The gasification technology would convert the waste into synthetic gas that could produce more than 100 megawatts of power a year through steam- and gas-turbine cogeneration.
Not surprisingly, many Toronto city councillors are reluctant to embrace any thermal technology because of the association to older incineration methods. Hopefully the Ottawa project will help enlighten folks in Toronto, which needs to come up with a solution before trash that’s destined for Michigan landfills is stopped at the U.S. border.
The story is another example of how technology that works and can exceed all environmental standards is being held up by spineless politicians with outdated notions; so-called community leaders who are afraid to take chances despite the serious problems in front of them. Hopefully Bryden’s latest power play, boosted by his profile in Canada, can help push the issue along.
For background information on the Ottawa demonstration facility, take a look at this report to its city council.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
October 10th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
I have to say that I’m rather disappointed with your view on gasification. I read your article in the Star and while I agree, the potential for this style of waste disposal is considerable, you failed to address the underlying problem: the waste itself.
Environmentalism isn’t about figuring out how to more carefully dispose of waste, it’s trying not to create any non-reusable waste in the first place. While gasification may very well be cleaner than sending mountains of polystyrene and batteries off to Michigan, it doesn’t negate the inherent waste of such products.
your suggestion that the slag can be used to mix with road asphalt sounds good, but that’s not re-use. At best, it’s waste redirection. Sustainability is making sure any waste we generate is absorbed into the environment as a useful product, and no matter what we do to the stuff we throw out, the majority of it will never be reclaimable.
Granted, gasification is better than coal, better than nuclear, even pitted against natural gas it has its merits. But it’s not sustainable and in my view, anything that continues to permit (or even encourage) waste not a step in the right direction.
October 10th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
I agree we should reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible, but 100 per cent diversion is a pipe dream, and even 60 per cent diversion will be difficult to achieve. So what do you propose we do with the rest of the garbage that currently is going to Michigan? Combined with new legislation that forces manufacturers, for example, to reduce packaging and recycle their products, the best choice appears so far to be gasification, which both deals with the residue garbage we have and contributes electricity to the grid.
Please don’t confuse this Blog or my Clean Break column as an environmental column; strictly speaking it isn’t. I’m all for saving the environment but there must be some balance in that mission, and simply stating that you are disappointed I didn’t address the waste issue itself is missing the point: That waste isn’t completely going away and must be dealt with. Gasification using plasma-arc technology is one way to go about it, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s one of the best ways.
You speak of diversion and reducing waste, but using this reasoning you must be against the organics green bin program as well — it simply converts our organic waste into inert landfill and flares off the methane that’s produced? How is that any better or worse than gasification of other residual waste?
Rejecting a technology out of the concern you just raised is one of the reasons why we’ll be debating new technologies for the next decade and, in the end, doing nothing to deal with a real problem.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
It is great to see ways to handle our mounting waste problems. In reviewing your numbers, 100 MW per year is equal to about 273 kW per day, or 11 kwh. This is an insiginifcant amount of electricity and certainly won’t solve any energy issues. There are other methods for solving waste and energy issues, such as digesting the waste to produce methane either for energy or for liquid natural gas…
The response to the first comment is great. The energy/waste issues facing the developed countries are an incredible hurdle and no silver bullet exists. Until we actually start trying some of these technologies out, demonstrate their viability, evaluate, then proceed, we’ll never get anywhere. The first step is to try everything, even if the plasma arc technology isn’t the best, it sure is a start. Go with it.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Tyler is truley one of the few people in this country that “gets it” when it comes to this issue.
Hardline environmentalists like daniel are not doing their cause any favours. Garbage is a reality. It’s not going away. There is no silver bullet, and their probably never will be. It’s going to take a combination of various solutions ranging from recylcing, waste reduction, and innovative new technologies like that of Plasco. It’s also going to take acceptance from the ideologues that we need to stop creating barriers and start creating reasonable solutions.
While Plasco’s conversion of garbage into synthetic gas does create electricity, it’s not going to solve our electricity problems. The genius behind the solution is that it uses efficient electricity generation to make the technology economically viable. Goodwill is not enough to save the planet from climate change, but an economy based on highly-efficient use of its resources is.
As tyler says, even if we succesfully divert 60% through reduce, reuse, recyle programs, there is still the remaining 40%. The Michigan border is going to close imminantly, and then Toronto will have a major crisis. It’s still going to be cheaper to reduce waste than it will be to process it into energy. So we need to get away from the argument that daniel makes. It is only going to lead to inaction on this issue.
Thank you tyler for getting it.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:19 am
I agree with Anonymous’ point regarding the amount of power produced by this technology. According to his/her calculations, we would get 11kwh per day – not even enough to power my 1400sqft apartment for a day, which averages 50kwh per day with two people in it. And that’s all the trash from Toronto? So it would take 4.5 Torontos to power my houshold?
50 kwh/day = 4.55 Torontos
11 kwh/day/Toronto
That’s a lot of Torontos to power one household. Heck, Michigan could start returning the favor and sending their trash to Toronto. Then I could power my whole house!
Forget the environmental argument from Daniel. This technology can’t even sustain itself economically. Worse yet, it would be a taxpayer’s nightmare, because it would surely garner copious subsidies while allowing somebody (one somebody) to run one one-fifth of their household.
I would love to see us use our trash for power generation, but somebody is going to have to come up with some tech to increase product efficiency.
Having said that, it’s better than putting it in a landfill, and I do believe that experience and implementation is sometimes the best R&D.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:26 am
This calculation, this analysis, is just plain wrong. What Plasco Group proposes for the Toronto area and 401 corridor is a central energy-from-waste processing facility that would produce 100 megawatts of power annually, and that’s after supplying its own power needs. This equates to a 60-plus-turbine wind farm, but without the intermittency of wind. I think the confusion is that I said this facility would produce 100 megawatts annually. The “annually” should not have been used because it is consistent power output at any given time. (I’ve corrected this fact in the original post).
October 26th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
I am positive that the reporter errored in the stating the amount of power that would be generated. The correct amount is 100 MW per HOUR (24/7/365).