By
TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff
 |
Rhode
Island’s new composting law appears to have produced
one of its first new
businesses: a large food scrap-to-energy digester. The
$18.9 million project
broke ground near the Central Landfill on May 28.
(Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News)
|
The $18.9 million project broke ground near the Central Landfill
on May 28. The facility plans to begin accepting up to 250 tons of food scrap
daily by the end of the year. The facility will open just as the state’s
composting law takes effect, Jan. 1, 2016. The legislation, passed in 2014,
requires large restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and food makers to either
donate their leftover food to food pantries or farmers or ship it to a
composting facility.
An institution must only comply if it produces at least 104 tons
of food scrap annually and a commercial compost facility exists within 15 miles
of the institution. Until the new facility opens, Earth Care Farm in
Charlestown is the state’s only commercial composter.
Earth Care Farm uses open piles, known as windrows, to turn food
scrap and other organic material into nutrient-rich fertilizer.
The new facility, to be built by Israeli-based Blue Sphere Corp., will use a closed-tank fermentation process, called anaerobic digestion, to create methane, a burnable gas, and compost suitable for farming. The methane will fuel generators that have a capacity to generate up to 3.2 megawatts of power.
Blue Sphere says uneaten food will be its primary source of
energy, rather than other organic material such as yard waste and paper.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Rhode Islanders throw away
150 tons of wasted food annually.
National Grid has agreed to buy electricity for 9.5 cents per
kilowatt-hour for the first year, followed by annual 2 percent price increases.
The contract lasts for 15 years, with the possibility of an extension that must
be approved by the state Public Utilities Commission.
The power-purchase agreement was awarded in 2011 to Orbit
Energy Inc. of Raleigh, N.C. The company will be the operator
of the Rhode Island facility. It expects to employ five or six full-time
workers.
Using a technology designed and built by Austep of Italy, the
anaerobic digestion process will take place in two 2.5-million gallon tanks.
During the recent dedication, Michael OConnell, executive director
of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the operator of the Central
Landfill, said he will be glad to have the food scrap diverted from the waste
stream.
Blue Sphere recently opened its U.S. office in Charlotte, N.C.,
with plans to build 11 other biogas plants. Blue Sphere broke ground on its
first biogas-energy facility in Charlotte in March. The $27 million
5.2-megawatt facility has the capacity to power more than 3,000 homes.
All of
its new biogas facilities are expected to be running by 2018. The company wants
to open anaerobic digesters in other densely populated states that also have
composting laws such as Massachusetts and Connecticut.
“This is the best area in the United States to do anaerobic
digester business,” Blue Sphere CEO Shlomi Palas told ecoRI News.
Entropy Investment Management, a renewable-energy investment firm
based in Charlotte, will finance the project in Johnston and other projects.
A separate company, NEO Energy of
Portsmouth, N.H., has plans to build an organic waste-to-energy digester at the
Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown. The status of that project isn’t
known.