The arctic front that swept most of the nation this week forced the postponement of the ribbon cutting ceremony yesterday at a new 4.3 MW biogas capture and refining facility in Dallas Texas, but the freezing temperatures could not temper the excitement generated by this technology.
Who wouldn’t get excited by the prospects of turning waste and pollution into energy and savings?!
The environmental services industry is barely known by the general public and is covered by few analysts, yet it has quietly grown to some $640 billion in 2010, about the same size as the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries.
Most of us think first of oil spills or chemical cleanups, but the environmental services industry is broadly defined as the activities which produce goods and services to measure, prevent, limit or correct environmental damage to water, air and soil, as well as problems related to waste, noise, and eco-systems.
Waste-water management accounts for nearly 40% of the total environmental market and while the base infrastructure is largely in place in developed countries like the US, as today’s example demonstrates, there are tremendous opportunities for secondary and tertiary treating facilities.
Methane from biogas is a natural byproduct of sewage treatment, landfills and animal-waste facilities, and it is a ready source of renewable energy as yet mostly untapped. Rather than simply burning the greenhouse gas off, or worse, letting it escape into the atmosphere, municipalities are increasingly turning to solution providers with technology that captures this wasted resource to reduce their overall energy costs while improving the environment.
The innovative biogas plant will generate electricity and thermal load to power Dallas Water Utilities (DWU), partially offsetting the power it currently purchases from the grid.
The plant was designed and built by Ameresco (AMRC), a leading provider of energy efficiency solutions in North America, and a recent addition to our Green Portfolio in our green investment newsletter, Progressive Investor. The company will also operate and maintain the plant for DWU.
Besides reducing the electricity the utility consumes from traditional power plants fueled by fossil fuels, the environmental benefits of capturing the daily 1.5 million cubic feet of previously untreated gas are estimated to have the equivalent annual carbon reduction as:
– removing 30,328 cars off the road
– planting 37,580 acres of trees
– reducing 19,150 tons of CO2 annually
– heating of more than 4,549 average size homes
Last but not least, the City of Dallas is expected to achieve annual savings of $1.5 million. Not bad for waste-water!
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