Authority reviewing viability of energy from waste

Foothills: Commission to decide on continued participation in program

Tanya Kostiw/OWW

A Foothills Regional Landfill employee bulldozes garbage. The regional waste authority is contemplating its continued participation in the Southern Alberta Energy from Waste Alliance.

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The Foothills region’s waste authority is considering whether to continue its involvement in a group investigating new ways to deal with municipal garbage.

The Foothills Regional Services Commission, which includes Okotoks, Turner Valley, Black Diamond and the MD of Foothills, is currently an active member of the Southern Alberta Energy from Waste Alliance (SAEWA). SAEWA is a group of 16 waste authorities exploring the possibility of creating an energy from waste facility in the Vulcan area. The group commissioned a study to investigate the facility’s feasibility and potential methods and recently received the results.

Money has been set aside in the local commission’s budget to continue its participation in SAEWA, but it must now decide whether it wants to continue its involvement. The cost is about $24,000 for the year.

The commission’s representative on SAEWA, Okotoks Coun. Laurie Hodson, said the study is interesting, but the commission is faced with difficult choices on how to proceed.

“Before we continue, I think our commission really has to make some tough decisions here,” he said. “Do we really in our hearts of hearts feel that this project represents a viable change in direction for us or not?”

The region’s current landfill has more than 100 years left to accommodate waste. The earliest time the energy from waste facility could be operational is six or seven years, he said.

Hodson questioned whether the commission would want to rush into the new technology, noting it has an expensive piece of property and operation to handle the region’s waste for years to come.

However, Hodson also questioned whether the commission could justify burying waste if a technology has been proven to be more environmentally friendly and cost effective.

Neil MacDonald, one of the engineers from HDR Corporation, which is behind the SAEWA Research Project Summary Report, said energy from waste is not a new technology, but there have been many advances in combustion efficiency and air pollution controls.

Energy from waste technology has been well-established and “has been studied and found to be very safe from the point of view of health and the environment and ecology,” MacDonald said.

The report primarily looked at four different energy from waste technologies – RDF processing and combustion, mass burn combustion, gasification and plasma arc gasification. Capital costs for these methods range from about $429,000 to $477,000, while a landfill costs about $267,000. Total expenditures for these methods over their lifecycle range from $1.7 million to $2.1 million, while for a landfill it would be about $1 million. However, when factoring in the revenue generated from selling the electricity produced and recycled materials, the cost per tonne of waste for a landfill is $94. The cost per tonne for the energy from waste methods ranges from $57 to $114.

MacDonald said the SAEWA group has the potential to build a viable facility.

“With this group of communities, there’s sufficient waste material to supply a facility, the energy recovery that could be realized from a facility would be substantial,” he said.

Mass burn combustion is the most conventional energy from waste method which entails burning waste and recovering the heat released in a boiler system to produce steam and run a turbine to produce electricity, MacDonald explained.

Under RDF processing and combustion, waste is turned into fuel pellets which can replace coal and be burnt to create energy to produce steam and generate electricity through a turbine. Under the gasification process, waste is burned at a lower temperature for longer without oxygen. The gas is mostly methane and hydrocarbon, which is recovered and used to produce energy. Plasma arc gasification is a subset of gasification, which uses a high energy stream of plasma to cook the waste in a low oxygen environment to quickly drive off gas fuel, which is used to create energy.

According to MacDonald the mass burn combustion is the most energy generation efficient of the four options.

SAEWA chair Kim Craig said he hopes the group will adopt the report next month and noted members will need to agree on how to proceed. He said he hopes the municipalities involved in the group stay engaged and believes energy from waste technology is one of the options for future waste management, noting diversification is essential.

“This kind of a technology adds to the balancing on how you deal with municipal solid waste and construction and demolition materials and other types of waste that are out there because I don’t think that you’re ever going to probably have it where landfills are totally eliminated.”

Landfill capacities are putting some municipalities in tough positions, he explained, as some are nearly full while others have many years left. However, Craig noted environmental laws are likely to change many times before those landfills in the latter situation run their course.

“To assume that you can operate a landfill the same in 100 years as you do today is probably a pretty high risk proposition.”

Craig said mass burning seems to stand out as the most practical method based on the report, but it does not mean the group will choose it. If the project carries on, he said they will call for interest from providers of the various technologies.

“I think we wouldn’t eliminate anything at this point in time, just see what the different technology providers could come up with because they might be able to modify their technology to fit our needs.”

For more information on SAEWA and to read the report, visit www.saewa.ca.