Norwegian company hopes to generate energy, capture carbon from Alberta garbage

A Norwegian clean energy development company is betting big on Alberta as the place to combine its waste-to-energy technology with a method of capturing carbon and storing it underground.

Varme Energy, which was incorporated in Edmonton this summer, wants to set up facilities in Alberta that use Aitos gasification technology, a two-step combustion process owned by its parent company that's been used in waste-to-energy facilities in Norway for more than a decade.

Through this process, waste that was headed for landfill instead is converted into steam that can be used for district heating, industrial processes or put through a turbine to generate power. 

"You're literally diverting the [garbage] trucks, instead of going and dumping at the landfill, they come and dump into a facility like ours," said Sean Collins, CEO of Varme Energy, a subsidiary of Norway's Green Transition Holding. 

Varme hopes to make a profit while also making a dent in the growing piles of trash sent to municipal landfills, which are collectively responsible for about 23 per cent of the country's methane emissions and can be costly and time-consuming to build. 

Garbage is already turned into electricity in other parts of Canada. Brampton, Ont., is home to the Emerald Energy From Waste facility, and both Burnaby, B.C., and Courtice, Ont., have waste-to-energy facilities operated by the New Jersey-based Covanta. In Burnaby, the facility takes in about a quarter of Metro Vancouver's trash. 

Others, like Montreal-based Enerkem, use waste to generate biofuels or chemicals, rather than energy. That company has a facility in Edmonton and another planned in Varennes, Que. 

But Collins says Varme's facilities would be the first in Canada to both generate energy from waste, and to capture the excess carbon and store it underground, a process that's been piloted in Norway, but has not yet been tested in Canada.

The company decided to set up shop in Alberta in part because of the province's geology, which is some of the best in the world for storing carbon. It's a marked contrast from Norway, where carbon must be transported to the coast and piped underneath the sea bed, according to Andreas Karlsen. 

"I would call [Alberta] ground zero for carbon capture globally, and that's why we would like to focus a lot of our capital in building our plants in Canada," said Karlsen, who is head of energy from waste with Green Transition Holding, which owns Aitos gasification technology and a portfolio of other companies.

Varme has its initial sights set on facilities in Edmonton, the nearby industrial heartland and Innisfail, Alta.

Jean Barclay, mayor of Innisfail, has signed a letter of intent with Varme in support of the company's work, though she said other municipalities would need to sign on to contribute waste to make the project work.

"We'll see where it goes, but I'm quite excited about seeing what comes of it," she said. 

Meanwhile, another group in southern Alberta has been slowly picking away at the process of building a waste-to-energy plant since 2009.