Toronto to produce biogas from organic waste

The City of Toronto, in partnership with Canada’s largest natural gas distributor, Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc., will begin installing new equipment at the Dufferin Solid Waste Management Facility later this year. The new equipment will allow the City and Enbridge to transform the raw biogas produced from processing Toronto’s Green Bin organics into renewable natural gas (RNG) and inject that gas into the natural gas grid. Once in the grid, the City will be able to use the RNG to fuel its collection trucks. The first cubic metre of RNG is expected to be produced by the third quarter of 2019.

This project is reportedly one of the first of its kind in Canada and North America and will allow the City to reduce fuel costs for its fleet of collection trucks and significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

The RNG project supports the City’s Long Term Waste Management Strategy and move toward a circular economy by using a closed-loop approach in which organics collection trucks are ultimately powered by the waste product they collect. The City is partnering with Enbridge on the design and construction of the new equipment as well as its operation and maintenance for the first 15 years.

Current estimates suggest that the Dufferin RNG facility will produce approximately 5.3 million cubic metres of RNG per year – enough to power 132 heavy duty garbage trucks or about 90% of the City’s solid waste collection fleet. This is the first of four waste-to-RNG production opportunities identified by the City.