Oh, Canada! What wonderful green things you do! Edmonton, Alberta is about to get the world’s first municipal scale gas to biofuel plant and when it is up and running they’ll be recycling 90% of their non-reusable trash into biofuel. That’s 100,000 tons of garbage diverted from the landfill — which translates into nine million gallons of biofuel. The plant will begin operation in 2011 and the city of Edmonton is hoping that other North American cities will follow in their footsteps.
“Alberta is an energy province,” said Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. “This project is another example of how our government is helping develop leading-edge renewable and non-renewable energy technology. I applaud the vision and dedication the partners have shown to make this pioneering project a reality.” Alberta is the very same province where the infamous oil sands are wreaking havoc on the environment. Perhaps if all North American cities start converting their trash to fuel, we could make a deal to shut down those oil sands.
For now the city of Edmonton is proud of their forward thinking. “Edmonton’s environmental leadership has us continually looking to set the bar higher,” Edmonton Mayor, Stephen Mandel, said. “As a result of this facility, we will become the first major city in North America to see 90 per cent of residential waste diverted from landfill by 2013.” The plant is being built and run by Enerkem Alberta Biofuels and will have a total price tag of $80 million. The city of Edmonton threw $42 million at the project and will surely recoup some of that through diverted disposal costs — it could have cost the city $3 million to send the amount of trash the plant will convert into fuel to the landfill. This way, not only are they saving money by not throwing things away but they’re getting millions of gallons of clean fuel from the process.
Via Autoblog Green
I hate to read “Oh, Canada! What wonderful green things you do!”
Given that some moves are good, i hesitate about glorifying my country on the matter of greeness.
Remember the oil sands that are being harvested in alberta? The least this province can do is compensate for the terrible damage it does to the environment.
And i wonder how clean this biofeul is to produce… no more landfill is good but at what cost ? What kind of waste does the transformation process release in the air and water ?
So dont go Oh canada how wonderful and green you are. Sure there are good moves but with the current government i call say i’m proud.
I’d like to clarify that Edmonton will not be recycling 90% of non-reusable waste to biofuel. We are already diverting 60% of residential waste from landfill through recycling and composting. An additional 30% will be converted to biofuel, which will bring us to 90% diversion.