Feb 19 - Canadian Press

The Ontario government wants to get garbage onto the grid.

The province's environment ministry said Tuesday it's looking at a two-pronged approach that would turn trash destined for landfills into valuable energy.

The ministry posted a request for proposals this week to study the environmental impacts two technologies - plasma gasification and a system that captures methane gas from garbage dumps - which could curb landfill waste while generating power.

The province wants to know which of the two waste-disposal systems leaves the smallest environmental footprint over time, said Minnie de Jong, manager of the ministry's human toxicology and air standards division.

"Energy from waste is obviously an attractive proposal because it not only deals with waste, but it produces energy and therefore helps meets energy needs," she said in an interview Tuesday.

The energy-from-garbage approach would seemingly solve two problems facing the province. Rolling brownouts have beset Ontario in recent years, although peak demand for power last summer was down by almost five per cent from a 2006 high of 27,005 megawatts.

Meanwhile, some municipalities have also faced garbage crunches as their dumps near capacity.

Environment ministry spokesman John Steele said 30 landfill sites in Ontario receive roughly 90 per cent of the province's waste, with most of the remaining garbage going to dumps in Michigan.

He estimates the province's landfills are about 20 to 30 years from reaching capacity, but added that number is fluid since composting and other waste diversion methods reduce the amount of waste that reaches dumps.

"It's true that we're running out of landfill capacity in the province of Ontario," Steele said. "Are there new technologies out there that can dispose of what's left over? The answer is yes."

The two technologies being studied generally work like this: plasma gasification superheats gases to vaporize garbage and produce power, while the gas-capturing landfill system takes methane gas emitted from garbage and turns it into energy.

Ottawa's Plasco Energy, headed by former Ottawa Senators owner Rod Bryden, recently converted a load of the city's garbage into electricity and sold it to Hydro Ottawa.

The Plasco plant currently operates two days a week, but Bryden said the plan is to ramp up production to seven days a week by April.

Each tonne of converted waste produces 1.4 megawatt hours of electricity, Bryden said - enough to supply an average home with power for nearly two months.

The plant is designed to handle 100 tonnes of garbage each day.

The ash left behind from the vaporized garbage is used in concrete and asphalt production, Bryden said, and the gases fuel the plant's engines.

One kilogram of non-reusable waste is left over for each tonne of garbage processed, which is taken to a hazardous waste disposal site.

"It would be a surprise to me if there was such speed of adoption and such unanimity that any single solution, no matter how good, would absorb every ounce of waste that otherwise would go to disposal," he said.

"But I do believe it will be used throughout Ontario, and I do believe it will absorb a very substantial share of the waste."

Bryden wouldn't say how much it costs to process a tonne of waste, but some say the technology is relatively expensive to operate.

"The main drawback of these technologies has been the cost," said Roberto Narbaitz, a civil engineering professor at the University of Ottawa.

The environment ministry's study will only examine the environmental impact of the two systems and won't look at cost, de Jong said. She added the province will make the report available to municipalities considering their own waste management options.