City of Edmonton Announces Waste to Fuel Facility

Edmonton is one step closer to having the world's first industrial-scale facility for producing advanced biofuels from municipal solid waste. On April 21, 2009, Alberta Environment issued the necessary regulatory approval so that EnerkemGreenField Albert Biofuels ("Enerkem") can begin construction at its new Edmonton "waste-to-fuel" facility

In 2008, the City of Edmonton entered into a 25 year agreement with Enerkem to build and operate a municipal solid waste to ethanol facility, which is to be located at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre.

Under the agreement, the City of Edmonton will provide the facility with at least 100,000 tonnes of sorted municipal waste per year. Such waste is the end product after recycling and composting, and would otherwise be landfilled. The Enerkem facility will use thermo-chemical technologies to convert carbon rich materials, present in the waste, into gas. The gas is then cleaned, purified and further converted into biofuels such as methanol and ethanol.

When completed, the facility will have the capacity to generate 36 million litres of advanced biofuels, primarily ethanol, through a process that maintains a positive energy balance. Enerkem and the City of Edmonton boast that the project will be the equivalent of removing 12,000 cars from the road, as it will reduce Alberta's carbon dioxide emissions by 6 million tons.

The estimated cost of the Edmonton facility is $70 million dollars. The City of Edmonton and the Alberta Energy Research Institute are together contributing $20 million dollars, and the City of Edmonton states that it will also be contributing $50 million to a related processing and research facility as part of its Waste Management Centre.

Enerkem is Canadian based company that is involved in several second generation biofuel production projects across Canada. Since 2003, it has operated a small-scale pilot project in Sherbrooke, Quebec which uses a variety of waste products, including municipal solid waste, to produce biofuels. In 2009, a commercial-sized Enerkem facility in Westbury, Quebec entered its start-up phase. The Westbury facility will produce biofuels from decommissioned electricity poles.

The regulatory approval issued to Enerkem on April 21, 2009 marks the final step in the regulatory process for the Edmonton facility. The approval imposes strict guidelines on the construction of the facility and reporting requirements in several areas of potential concern, including air, water and soil pollution. Among other requirements, Enerkem must develop and implement a carbon capture plan and groundwater monitoring program.

Jennifer Cleall and Elise Currie-Roberts

If everything goes according to schedule, construction will begin at the Edmonton facility later this year and will be completed near the end of 2010.