Metro Vancouver takes steps to remove some heat from its Burnaby incinerator

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Metro Vancouver is immersed in a $207 million plan to offset the greenhouse gases it produces by burning about 25 per cent of the region’s trash with what could be the largest district energy system in South America. North.

The regional authority has incinerated about 240,000 tons of the region’s trash at a facility in South Burnaby since 1988, where it has also always generated enough electricity to power about 16,000 homes, said Paul Henderson, general manager of the solid waste service.

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The next step, however, is to collect much of the heat generated by the waste-to-energy facility and convert it into hot water for the River District neighborhood in South Vancouver and eventually for downtown Metrotown. of Burnaby and the Edmonds neighborhood.

Henderson said the incinerator generates steam as a means of cooling its combustion chamber, but also drives a turbine that generates electricity to sell to BC Hydro.

“With urban energy, you take some of that steam and heat hot water,” Henderson said. “And by doing that, you triple the energy recovery of the system, because it is more efficient to heat hot water than to generate electricity.”

Metro is already in detailed design work for the first phase of the project, construction of a new central energy center adjacent to the incinerator and a four-mile pipeline system to connect to the River District’s existing system, which is expected to cost $84 million and is in place. by 2026.

Henderson said Metro signed an agreement with Vancouver in 2021 to embark on the project, in which its hot water will displace the natural gas boilers now used by the River District system, although it will maintain those facilities as a backup.

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And the city of Burnaby has created a district energy company to determine routes to connect additional pipelines to Metrotown and eventually Edmonds to serve primarily multifamily housing, which Metro expects to cost $123 million.

However, the budget for that second phase has not yet been approved.

Henderson said there is a plan to install electric vehicle charging facilities along Riverbend Drive, next to the entrance to Terminus Park in Burnaby.

“Just to demonstrate, ‘Here’s the waste-to-energy facility, and the electricity flows directly into this charger.’ “

In the long term, this district energy system is expected to generate enough heat for 50,000 homes, reducing 70,000 tons of CO2 and offsetting greenhouse gases from burning 240,000 tons of garbage.

“At a high level, our goal is to reduce waste as much as possible,” Henderson said.

Metro has seen a 23 percent per capita reduction in the amount of trash people throw away each year since 2011, but Henderson said the regional district will still have residual trash to deal with no matter what reduction and recycling efforts it implements. . in the immediate future.”

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“No matter how that residual trash is managed, there will always be greenhouse gases associated with it,” Henderson said. Garbage landfills produce methane, which is an even more powerful GHG.

“For us, (the benefit) is the combination of minimizing litter as much as possible and then also looking at initiatives like this that have the potential to (overall reduce) greenhouse gas emissions,” Henderson added.

District power, which distributes centrally produced steam or hot water over a large geographic area, is not a new concept and several metropolitan municipalities have considerable experience with this type of utility, with around 18 spread across the region.

Independently owned Creative Energy operates a district system supplying heat to much of downtown Vancouver, which it is electrifying in part, among its utility portfolio.

The city itself has a district system that uses waste heat from the sewer system to supply the Olympic Village, with plans to expand its footprint in False Creek.

Metro itself is working with municipalities on similar projects to harness waste heat from sewer systems, Henderson said.

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Henderson said the waste-to-energy district system is being designed under a “cost recovery” model in which Metro will charge wholesale rates for heat that will repay its capital cost over the life of the project.

“You can imagine that with a system like this, those initial upfront costs are really high,” Henderson said. But “once it’s in the ground and the infrastructure is built, the annual operating costs are relatively low.”

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