Peelings Power: The Energy Garden is Growing a Cleaner Future

At the B.C. Bioenergy Network, we seek out and support companies and organizations keen to pilot and demonstrate new clean bioenergy technologies.

That’s why we were delighted to be present today as Harvest Power officially threw the switch on a new facility that will convert Metro Vancouver’s kitchen cast-offs and yard trimmings into clean energy and soil.

The company’s Energy Garden, in Richmond, B.C., is now North America’s largest commercial-scale high solids anaerobic digester. Each year, the facility will convert up to 40,000 tonnes of apple cores, pizza crusts, and yard trimmings into useful products. In doing so, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of roughly 10,255 tonnes.

The facility feeds enough energy into the grid to power approximately 900 homes per year, and provides hundreds of thousands of tonnes of soil for farms and gardens.

KPMG recently included The Energy Garden on its list of 100 leading global infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, Bloomberg New Energy Finance declared Harvest Power a 2013 New Energy Pioneer.

Innovative technologies like those that power the Energy Garden often take years to make the leap from the lab bench to the marketplace. At the B.C. Bioenergy Network, we partner to develop these technologies and projects that in turn create sustainable clean energy solutions.

Sure Beats Coal: Another load of “fuel” heads for the Energy Garden digester.

Many of our projects take waste residuals and turn them into valuable resources. We often take an ecological challenge—for example, waste disposal—and turn it into a positive solution with multiple benefits.

Once built, projects such as The Energy Garden serve not only as viable businesses, but also as a showcase for others that might follow, demonstrating how a clean-energy economy just makes sense.

Today’s kick-off marks the end of a long road for Harvest Power and the beginning of a new one. We’re proud to have been a part of it.