The project will establish an Energy Garden, a municipal green (food and yard) waste-to- renewable energy demonstration in the Lower Mainland.
The waste-to-renewable energy demonstration will divert 27,000 tonnes of organic materials away from British Columbia landfills.
As part of the project, $1m loan will be used for the commercial demonstration of a High Solids Anaerobic Digestion (HSAD) plant that will convert municipal green waste to produce electricity under the BC Hydro Community Based Biomass Power Call.
A $500,000 grant will be used for acquiring a pilot scale mobile HSAD testing unit, a Mobile Energy Harvester, that will be used initially in Richmond and later toured throughout North America.
The Government of Canada has also invested $4m for this project through its Clean Energy Fund.
The Richmond Energy Garden will process 27,000 tons of food scraps and yard debris each year, using an anaerobic digestion process that converts those materials to biogas, that will then be used to produce more than 6,000MWh of electricity per year.
In addition, Harvest’s Mobile Energy Harvester fits inside a shipping container on wheels and will feature small scale versions of HSAD equipment.
