Construction began today on the world’s first ever industrial scale waste-to-biofuel facility.
Being built by privately-owned Enerkem Inc, the $75 million plant will be in Edmonton, Alberta and be able to generate enough biofuel to run over 400,000 vehicles each year using a five per cent ethanol fuel blend. Canada has been taking a forefront in the internationally community in biofuel investments as a means to reduce its carbon footprint. The country will announce in September that all petrol must have five per cent renewable content.
Enerkem has obtained a 25-year agreement with the local Edmonton council to use 100,000 tonnes of the city’s municipal waste to produce the biofuels each year. The facility will bring 180 new jobs to the region and is slated to begin operations near the end of 2011.
Enerkem, based in Montreal, has been around since its founding in 2000 with its development of in-house technology that uses heat-induced gasification to process and produce biofuels from waste. At the moment, the firm has to waste-to-biofuel plants in Quebec. One was opened as a pilot facility, while the other is run on the commercial scale. Electricity poles are used as feedstock at the commercial plant.
Several US states have also proposed municipal waste-to-biofuel plants as the technology begins to gain momentum on a global scale.
However, many projects that were in the pipeline when the recession hit have since been halted. The global recession has put the brakes on for many renewable energy firms causing the sector to slow somewhat.
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