A landfill in southwestern Ontario is turning garbage into green energy
CBC
A renewable natural gas facility being built at a landfill near the town of Blenheim, Ont., southwest of London, will soon turn eye watering fumes from rotting food, paper, and other organic waste into green energy.
The facility under construction will belong to Waste Connections of Canada, which owns the Ridge Landfill site, while Enbridge Gas will own and operate all of the infrastructure needed to move the renewable energy into the natural gas system.
"The large mounds you see around the [landfill] are piles of underground decomposing organic waste that produces methane," said Justin Egan, a business development specialist for Enbridge Gas, pointing to mounds of garbage.
The landfill gas produced from the garbage piles will be collected at the Ridge Landfill then purified to become a renewable natural gas. It will then be transported to an injection point 5.7 km away in Blenheim using Enbridge Gas' pipeline system where it will be added to the regular natural gas supply.
Enbridge Gas began construction in July and the facility is expected to be up and running by the end of summer 2024, according to Egan.
The landfill is expected to generate enough renewable natural gas to power 40,000 homes a day and should keep supplying energy for the next 20 years, said Nicole Brunner, the manager of new energy supply at Enbridge Gas.
"It's an opportunity to use methane that would otherwise just be wasted and go into the atmosphere," Brunner said.
She added consumers also won't have to worry about higher energy bills when the facility is finally operational since natural gas made from organic waste is nearly identical to the conventional kind.
The Blenheim site is just one of the natural gas projects in different stages of development across the province meant to create renewable natural gas to help Ontario reach its emissions targets, Egan said.
"As long as there are humans and animals, there's going to be waste and so why not use that waste as a renewable source of energy?"
The provincial government previously promised a 30 per cent reduction of greenhouse emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030 putting Ontario in line with Canada's target under the Paris Agreement. To meet this goal, the province needs to drop annual emissions down to 144 megatonnes.
The province produced 150.6 megatonnes of greenhouse gases in 2021 according to a recent report by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Brunner added that the facility, and those like it, will each lower emissions by around 110,00 tons a year.
"That's the equivalent of 24,000 passenger vehicles off the road every year," she said.
A landfill near Sarnia is also hoping to convert it's methane gas emissions into renewable energy.