Anaerobic digestion in urban settings?

Tyler — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:41:50 +0000

When we talk about using anaerobic digester technology to produce biogas from organic material, and then using that biogas to generate electricity, we’re usually talking about processing agricultural waste or manure out on some farm or rural facility. But what about the city? There’s thousands of tons of organic or “green bin” waste produced every day in cities like Toronto, and much of it still goes to landfill — particularly organics from multi-unit dwellings and industrial/commercial operations.

My Clean Break column this week looks at the idea of building a network of small anaerobic digester systems across a city where buildings/businesses that produce organic waste are clustered. The material can be collected locally (no long-distance hauling), processed locally, and the heat and electricity produced can be used locally to help make the urban grid more reliable.

Any thoughts?

Plasco to build energy-from-waste facility in Alberta

Tyler — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:53:16 +0000

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.

Plasco already has a small demonstration plant at an Ottawa-area landfill site that processes up to 85 tons of municipal solid waste daily. Last month, Ottawa city council gave a conditional go-ahead for a 150,000 ton-a-year facility (about 410 tons per day) under a 20-year waste supply contract. Plasco would get a $60 tipping fee for every ton received and also, under a new Ontario feed-in tariff program, would be able to sell electricity to the grid for 11 cents a kilowatt-hour. That plant is expected to have a baseload capacity of about 21 megawatts.

The Red Deer facility is conditional on the performance of the Ottawa demonstration plant, which must meet certain energy efficiencies and a variety of strict environmental requirements. Same goes for the larger Ottawa plant. There has been some concern expressed, on this blog and others, that Plasco’s pilot plant still isn’t functioning as promises — i.e. that it’s operating under capacity, and has been in and out of service as the company fine-tunes its processes and adjusts equipment. It also hasn’t generated much electricity, which makes sense because the government program that pays 11 cents per kilowatt-hour hasn’t yet started.

But the company seems to be confident enough with the performance of its Ottawa pilot plant to suggest it will start construction of the Red Deer plant “early in 2009.” Meanwhile, it appears the company has good access to money. You’ll recall last December it announced it had secured access to $200 million in funding to carry through with its plant buildouts. Plasco, in most cases, plans to own, build and manage the plants, earning revenues from tipping fees, electricity sales (where possible), and the sale of other byproducts from its process.

As you’ll see from the picture above, Plasco has also proposed to build one of its plants in Los Angeles, and CEO Rod Bryden has told me the company is in serious discussions with several other municipalities.

Alberta, it should be said, is becoming quite the leader in energy-from-waste adoption. In June the City of Edmonton, the province’s capital, announced that it would turn residual municipal solid waste into ethanol as part of a partnership with Montreal-based gasification expert Enerkem and Toronto-based Greenfield Ethanol, the largest independent ethanol producer in Canada.

Clean Break » municipal solid waste

Anaerobic digestion in urban settings?

Plasco to build energy-from-waste facility in Alberta