Companies pushing plans to divert Metro Vancouver’s rising tide of waste from landfills and into B.C.’s power grid
Business in Vancouver March 25-31, 2008
Krisendra Bisetty
A fight over municipal garbage is heating up as Metro Vancouver appears set to ship its waste to Washington state next year when the Cache Creek landfill reaches capacity.
A new waste-to-energy power project broke ground last week on Vancouver Island, where an old pulp and paper mill is being converted to incinerate biomass to generate enough electricity to power 90,000 homes.Vancouver-based Green Island Energy Ltd. expects to spend up to $300 million over the next two years at its Gold River site, completely refurbishing two boilers and installing new emissions equipment and a high-efficiency steam turbine generator.
The company, kick-started in 2003 with a cheque written by Jewel Kilcher, an American singer-songwriter and one-time renewable power investor, has now hooked up with Covanta Holding Corp.
The New Jersey company has a huge stable of waste-to-energy plants and US$1.4 billion in revenue. It will develop the Gold River project as Green Island attempts to convince Metro that it can dispose of 400,000 tonnes of refuse annually.
“We can take it all,” said Bruce Clark, a Green Island shareholder and its vice-president. “We have huge demand from people who want to send us refuse-derived fuel.”
Clark said the company has contract offers from Los Angeles, Portland, Honolulu and Seattle.
“[However], we would prefer to source our fuel locally … because we really fundamentally don’t want to deal with cross-border issues.”
Rod Bryden, president and CEO of Plasco Energy Group Inc., also wants Metro Vancouver’s garbage.
The private company, which earlier this year received its first load of municipal waste from Ottawa, where it’s based, wants to build, at its own cost, a series of plants in Vancouver.
It will generate revenue from tipping fees of about $65 a tonne of waste received and from power sales to Hydro at premium “green” electricity rates.
Dismissing as “nonsense” plans to ship waste to the U.S., Bryden said dumping garbage in landfills creates gases that damage the ozone.
Plasco has proposed building 15 identical 100 tonne-per-day modules – about four to a typical plant – possibly at existing transfer stations. Each plant would cost the company approximately $125 million and would generate about 23 megawatts of electricity.
Plasco claims its gasification technology produces a synthetic gas without any emissions. However, Bryden conceded there would be some emissions when it’s used as a fuel in an engine to generate power.
In a 2006 submission to Metro, Green Island said its plan included using existing transfer stations to process waste into what it calls “refuse derived fuel,” which is then baled and barged to the site for incineration.
Its Muchalat Industries Ltd. parent bought the assets of the Bowater Pulp and Paper Co. for approximately $7 million in 2003. In 2006, Green Island, which has three principal partners, including chairman and CEO David Kingston, an Idaho investor with interests in large real estate developments, was awarded an electricity purchase agreement from BC Hydro.
“Our permits are issued, we have a site and we have great acceptance from the local community,” said Vancouver-based Clark. “No matter how great your technology is, you still have to get support from your neighbours.”
Green Island claims its solution is competitive or even far less expensive than some alternatives and that it poses no risk to taxpayers.
“We just don’t understand why local government, regional government, would be chasing down a path that just ends up with you and I having higher taxes,” said Clark. “We don’t get it, and so we sit back and our shareholders and bankers sit back and say, ‘what’s wrong with that picture in Vancouver. Why do they want to spend more and get less?’”
Meantime, 33-year-old Kilcher told Business in Vancouver in a statement that the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by land-filling, bring “hundreds” of new jobs and provide clean and green certified energy for over 90,000 homes in B.C.
But Marvin Hunt, chairman of Metro Vancouver’s waste management committee, said a lot of questions remain around Green Island’s proposal, including what type of waste the company requires.
He said that because it’s not known whether waste can be barged during stormy winter months, storage and transportation are also issues.
The Surrey city councillor added that technologies like Plasco’s are still developing, and the company doesn’t have all the answers yet.
Having abandoned the idea of new landfills and realizing that exporting the waste is the only short-term alternative, the committee is looking at different waste-to-energy systems and expects to seek expressions of interest soon.
“We’re open to whatever technologies are [working] out there and are ‘relatively proven’.” •
kbisetty@telus.net
