In September 2024, Alberta, Canada announced that it would provide C$2.8 million in funding to build a carbon capture device for the province and the country's first waste-to-waste incineration power generation project.
In January this year, Alberta announced that it had reached an agreement with Norway company Varme Energy to build a new waste incineration power generation facility in Edmonton. If the waste incineration plant can be completed in four years as scheduled, then it will become the latest waste incineration power plant completed in North America since 2015, and the first waste incineration power generation project in Canada's history.
The service cycle of the project is 15 years. The project is located in the northeastern part of Edmonton. It processes about 200,000 tons of residential domestic waste every year, with a daily processing capacity of about 400-450 tons. The facility will be completed and opened in 2027, and the project investment is expected to be around US$300 million.
Babcock Wilcox (BW) will be responsible for the engineering construction and equipment supply of the project, and its services include the design, supply and construction of the plant's combustion grates, boilers and economizers, as well as the design and supply of air quality control systems (AQCS) for particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides, as well as carbon capture absorbers and sorbent regeneration systems.
Carbon emissions from garbage are currently the most difficult source of carbon emissions in Canada. Landfills account for 23% of Canada's methane emissions. If a waste-to-waste power plant is not built, carbon emission reduction from garbage will become empty talk.
According to popular trends in Europe and the United States, installing carbon capture devices in waste incineration power plants to further reduce carbon emissions from waste incineration is considered to be a lower-carbon and easier method to achieve centralized carbon capture. Therefore, this project in Alberta cannot be exempted from customs and must install carbon capture devices.
Norway company Varme Energy is expected to invest a total of C $6.1 million in research and development to develop a carbon capture device to collect carbon dioxide from flue gas. The captured carbon will be injected into an underground carbon storage center in Alberta, which plans to capture and store approximately 185,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year.
Alberta is also Canada's current technological leader in carbon capture and carbon sequestration. Currently, more than 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide has been safely stored through various methods, equivalent to the emissions of 2.9 million vehicles per year.
Varme Energy's front-end engineering and design studies are expected to be completed in December 2024, and construction will begin in 2025.
Carbon capture will also bring additional revenue to waste-to-waste power plants, and earlier this year (June 2024), Varme Energy announced a strategic partnership with the Canadian Growth Fund (CGF) and Gibson Energy. Under the agreement, CGF will purchase up to 200,000 tons of carbon credits per year from the project for 15 years, starting at $85 per ton.
The project is expected to retain the ability to sell up to 100000 tons of carbon emission reduction credits per year to the alternative carbon market, including as bioenergy with CCS(BECCS) atmospheric carbon removal credits, which means that if the waste-to-waste power plant is successfully installed after carbon capture equipment is successfully installed, it will be able to sell approximately 300,000 tons of carbon emission reduction credits per year, with annual revenue of approximately US$25.5 million.
After releasing the above funding plan, Alberta also announced that it plans to build a second waste-to-waste incineration power plant near the city of Edmonton, also implemented by Varme Energy.