by Daniel Bida on July 18, 2010
The second quarter of 2010 was a time of great transition for me personally, as I left my full time job at RiskMetrics Group (now MSCI Inc.) to work on developing community-owned biogas plants across Ontario on a full time basis.
This was followed by the beginning of two new and exciting projects: A General Resource Assessment for the Peterborough Green Energy Co-operative, and evaluation services to the Toronto Zoo for a biogas plant in development there. I’m expecting both projects to be complete by the end of Q3, but that they will be the beginning of something bigger. Both illustrate a desire by the market for community-owned biogas.
Other highlights included:
- The UpStart competition at MaRS, a business plan competition among the students of Entrepreneurship 101.
- Ontario officially launched the Community Energy Partnership Program – a $200,000 grant available to community groups to fund the soft costs related to developing a power project. Things like building a business case, contracting, technical studies, legal costs, and project management. It’s exactly the assistance many projects need to get from the idea phase to reality.
To read the full report, click here.
by Daniel Bida on July 16, 2010
Energy crop miscanthus grass
Earlier this week, I had an interesting conversation with a post-doc at University of Toronto who is currently completing a life cycle analysis of anaerobic digestion, and studying biomass supply scenarios (to use at Ontario’s coal plants, which are due to close in 2014).
He was sure that using energy crops for biogas was a bad idea, “Anaerobic digestion should focus on wet waste streams like food, manure and sludge, not dry ones. From a greenhouse gas reduction standpoint, it’s better to use energy crops for direct combustion” But what about from an energy efficiency standpoint or a rural economic development standpoint?
A point of clarification first – I’m not just referring to corn. I think it’s safe to say that most people, when they hear energy crops, think of corn for ethanol and some might get ready for a food vs. fuel debate. A ton of great research has been done on this subject in recent years and the consensus seems to be that hardy grasses like switchgrass and miscanthus are the best energy crops (although algae is promising too).
The energy potential of grass fields across Ontario, grown using permaculture principles (‘just set it and forget it’ - no watering, no fertilizer, no reseeding every season) supplying local and centralized plants is pretty awesome. But I’m an advocate for small-scale, distributed generation. Less power is lost in transportation, and local economies get stronger. Instead of the cash flowing to Ontario Power Generation, it flows into the savings accounts of private citizens and rural municipalities.
Using energy crops, grown locally, at community owned biogas (anaerobic digestion) and biomass (direct combustion) plants is an amazing way to create jobs, wealth, and have a positive impact on the environment and local food production.
photo credit: puppetfox
