From hockey to trash to electricity… curious?
Saturday, October 8th, 2005
A couple of weeks ago I had a post about the various companies out there promoting waste-to-energy technologies. I have a feature this morning in the Toronto Star that looks at a particular company and technology that has just been approved for a 75-tonne a day demonstration facility in Ottawa. The company behind this proposed facility is Plasco Energy Group, and its CEO — former Ottawa Citizens NHL hockey team owner Rod Bryden — believes his company’s plasma-arc waste-to-energy system could handle the 800,000 tonnes a year of solid waste generated in Toronto and surrounding areas. The gasification technology would convert the waste into synthetic gas that could produce more than 100 megawatts of power a year through steam- and gas-turbine cogeneration.
Not surprisingly, many Toronto city councillors are reluctant to embrace any thermal technology because of the association to older incineration methods. Hopefully the Ottawa project will help enlighten folks in Toronto, which needs to come up with a solution before trash that’s destined for Michigan landfills is stopped at the U.S. border.
The story is another example of how technology that works and can exceed all environmental standards is being held up by spineless politicians with outdated notions; so-called community leaders who are afraid to take chances despite the serious problems in front of them. Hopefully Bryden’s latest power play, boosted by his profile in Canada, can help push the issue along.
For background information on the Ottawa demonstration facility, take a look at this report to its city council.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
