Source: MIL-OSI Submissions
Source: Bioenergy Association
The announcement that Firstgas has agreed to upgrade biogas as a full replacement for natural gas shows that business is speeding up its own transition to using biofuels to provide renewable energy.
Firstgas has announced that it is collaborating with Ecogas who are building a facility to recycle organic wastes from across the North Island, including from Auckland, into biogas and biofertiliser. The Ecogas facility is under construction at Reporoa and will be a regional facility for recycling organic food residues.
Brian Cox , executive officer of the Bioenergy Association commented that “This initiative demonstrates to business and local councils that where they produce biogas in existing facilities that handle organic waste this can be upgraded to offset existing natural gas use. It is not just about recycling waste into energy, but recycling waste into dollars.”
“Council waste water treatment facilities often produce large amounts of biogas which could now be sold and so a Council that is not looking to do this, are missing out on revenue that could be used for funding other community opportunities”.
“A big benefit of replacing natural gas with biomethane is that we can do it now and that we can immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The other benefit is that by replacing natural gas with a drop-in fuel such as biomethane existing gas network infrastructure can continue to be used, and gas users carry on using their existing equipment.. Replacing natural gas with any other energy form would result in additional costs to gas users.”
“The Government has signaled that it wants us to move to a circular bioeconomy and businesses like these are showing how it can be done.”
“The Ecogas recycling of food waste uses proven technologies and is widely done in most other countries. New Zealand has been slow to adopt circular economy principles where food wastes are recycled to make other products rather than discharge to landfill. There is no reason why all communities across New Zealand could not have zero organic waste going to landfill by 2030.”
Firstgas announcement: Firstgas announcement
Ecogas – Recycling facility
Ecogas is developing Aotearoa New Zealand’s first commercial-scale anaerobic digestion facility in Reporoa, which will process up to 100,000 75,000 tonnes of food waste from households and businesses and kerbside household collection principally in Auckland at no increase of disposal cost to the customers in the North Island to produce biogas and an organic-rich biofertiliser. Biogas from the plant will be used to heat T&G Global’s neighbouring tomato-growing greenhouses, reducing fossil fuel use. Excess biogas will be upgraded and injected into the natural gas grid for household and commercial customers. The biofertiliser that is produced will be applied onto more than 1500 hectares of productive farmland, reducing reliance on imported carbon-intensive synthetic fertilisers.
This circular system will reduce climate change emissions from three sources: by diverting food waste from landfill – reducing landfill methane gas; create local renewable clean energy – reducing the gas sector emissions factor; and valuable biofertiliser – displacing carbon-intensive mineral fertiliser, and support food production. It also showcases what is possible in other parts of Aotearoa.
Waste to energy
- Waste-to energy results in the generation of heat and electricity through anaerobic digestion processing of residual waste streams that can not otherwise be sustainably reused or recycled and therefore diverting waste from landfill.
- Use of residual waste streams to produce energy forms part of the circular economy.
- New Zealand can achieve zero waste to landfill by 2040 if we start seeing residual waste as an opportunity and not a problem.
- An ideal opportunity exists to co-locate waste to energy facilities recycling organic liquid and solid waste residual waste streams with industrial heat users to displace the use of fossil fuel for the generation of heat and power.
- An ideal opportunity exists to combine bio-processing waste with the upgrade of waste water treatment plants. These upgraded plants have the ability to generate revenue to offset operating costs for local government bodies and could progressively be developed to the point of zero residual chemical discharge to water or sludge to land.
- Diversion of waste from landfills to waste to energy facilities reduces CO2 and methane emissions improving air quality, enhances the economic resilience of communities through reduction in waste water treatment facility usage, reduction in landfill reliance whilst providing new offtake business opportunities through the production of electricity, heat and bio processing opportunities.
- The technology for Bio-processing waste and waste water is well developed and the footprint is smaller than for existing sewerage processing systems employed, particularly those disposing to land.
- Technology for recycling of both liquid and solid residual waste streams is well developed and accepted internationally and able to be utilised in New Zealand with minimal (if any) changes therefore mitigating technology risk.
