Trash to heat: Federal loan helps push P.E.I.’s waste-to-energy plant forward

Federal financing is coming to help upgrade and expand a P.E.I. facility that converts the province’s garbage into heat.

On Prince Edward Island, trash is being converted into heat.

But the aging waste-to-energy facility in Charlottetown is due for an upgrade as it nears the end of its life. After years of delays, the project to replace and expand P.E.I. Energy Systems is finally moving forward, thanks to federal financing.

Enwave Energy Corporation made the announcement Wednesday afternoon at a press conference, with provincial ministers, local politicians and other stakeholders in attendance.

“Now is the time to transform our energy system with projects like this one,” said Gilles Arsenault, P.E.I.’s minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Action.

The goal is for the new state-of-the-art facility to be fully operational by 2028. Construction should start later this year or early next.

The plant is expected to convert 90 per cent of the province’s black cart residential waste - garbage that cannot be recycled or composted - into heat for 145 buildings, including homes, hospitals and schools.

Enwave estimates the project will divert up to 49,000 tonnes of waste from landfills annually. By reducing landfill methane and furnace-oil use, up to 908,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas could be avoided by 2052 - the equivalent of taking 278,000 gas-powered cars off the road.

“That will be of a great benefit to the city of Charlottetown. And the province,” said Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown.

First announced in 2019, the project stalled and the budget ballooned.

“It was challenging to start. Then we went through such long periods of pandemics and government changes, and changes in staffing, and interest rates, inflation and storms,” said Carlyle Coutinho, Enwave’s CEO.

He added that the project is now moving forward, in part thanks to more than $100 million from the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

The crown corporation’s CEO Ehren Cory says it was created to help projects like this.

“Charlottetown has a clear vision around net zero, that the province is invested in, and of course, as a federal entity, we are too. So I think it shows that kind of alignment.”

He added that the funding is a loan, not a grant, but he expects it to deliver well beyond the economics.

“We get paid back in money, we get paid back in GHG emissions reduction…we get paid back in waste diversion,” Cory said. “It has good financials, it has good climate, it has good cost effectiveness for customers.”

Coutinho said there are close to seven facilities like this across Canada, but in Japan, he said, there are about 300.

“We have to think about the future and think differently and follow the lead of those that have been very successful,” he said.

The World Bank forecasts that global waste will increase 70 per cent by 2050, and projects that North America is positioned to hold 20 per cent of the energy-from-waste market.

Enwave says a similar approach could be scaled up or down across the country, if all levels of government align to get it done.