There’s something about this company I just really like. Montreal-based Enerkem Inc. announced today that it will build, own and operate a waste-to-ethanol plant in Pontotoc, Mississippi, marking its first deal in the United States. The facility, called Enerkem Mississippi Biofuels, will involve an investment of $250 million. That will cover the cost of building the company’s cellulosic ethanol plant, which uses proprietary gasification, catalysis and gas conditioning processes. It will also cover the cost of an upstream solid waste recycling and pre-treatment facility.

The plan is for Enerkem to accept about 189,000 tons of unsorted waste per year from the nearby Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority of Mississippi. The two organizations are in the process of negotiating final financial and binding agreements. Enerkem figures that about 60 per cent of the incoming waste can be gasified at its ethanol plant to produce about 20 million gallons (about 75 million litres) of cellulosic biofuel annually. That would include crop and forest residues, urban “organic” waste, construction and demolition debris, including treated wood. The non-biomass portions that can’t be converted will be sorted and sent off for recycling.

This is a perfect example of green job creation. (more…)

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use a biomass gasification system from Vancouver-based Nexterra Energy Corp. to save on energy costs and reduce its carbon footprint. The system is being purchased by Johnson Controls Inc., which has been given an $89 million contract with Oak Ridge to deploy a number of building management and energy-conservation measures. (more…)

Plasco Energy Group has signed its first commercial North American contract for an energy-from-waste facility, building on the pilot plant that’s currently in operation in Ottawa, Ontario. The company announced that it has signed a deal with Red Deer, Alberta, to build a facility that will process 300 tons-per-day of waste and generate 15 megawatts of “green” electricity for the local grid. The company’s technology is based on gasification and a number of processes that create high-quality syngas, which is then burned in Jenbacher engines to generate electricity. (more…)