Waste investment push
THE challenge of waste and resource recovery needs investment in more sophisticated and regionally based solutions, the Geelong region’s business and civic leaders have been told.
Leading the way is an innovative waste-to energy project involving industrial waste at Colac that is generating enough power for 1000 homes alongside other energy savings.
The annual G21 Stakeholders Forum on Friday was told other regional opportunities include reclaiming billions of litres of treated wastewater that was currently discharged into the ocean and harvesting the embedded energy in organic waste going to landfill.
Corio Waste Management CEO Mat Dickens said a change was needed from the rudimentary operations of most resource and recycling facilities.
“I would say that up to this point we have tried to deal with waste in the lowest cost possible manner,” Mr Dickens said.
He said a changing attitude towards the cost of waste would lead to greater public and private investment and innovation in the industry.
“I think the solution will take a few years to get to but it will be a number of niche, specialist recycling operations,” Mr Dickens said.
Mr Dickens said he was frustrated by investment in technology.
“I think that’s going to turn around. It will cost more … but it can’t be avoided,” he said.
However, Mr Dickens warned that anticipated massive hikes in landfill levies could have a deleterious effect on support from people.
As part of its plan to haul in its CO2 emissions by 2030, Barwon Water has been working on a project to convert waste into dispatchable renewable energy with the Australian Lamb Company and Bulla Dairy Foods in Colac.
Barwon Water’s general manager infrastructure and technology, Shaun Cumming, the lack of sophisticated said the project represented a change of mindset from encouraging industry to take care of as much of its waste as it could to giving all the waste to the water authority to turn into energy.
“Essentially what we do is put that it into a giant home brew kit that creates gas. That gas then runs an engine that creates electricity,” Mr Cumming said.
Heat from the engine is also returned to the business to offset gas usage.
He said the project was looking at delivering about 6GW of electricity, or enough to power about 1000 homes, alongside further gas and CO2 savings.