Waste Management announces educational partnership with Carleton University

Waste Management and Carleton University propose to establish Renewable Energy Laboratory

OTTAWA, May 28 /CNW Telbec/ - Waste Management today officially opened its new state-of-the-art landfill gas to energy facility with the announcement of a partnership with Carleton University to establish a Renewable Energy Laboratory along with a scholarship program.

The Laboratory will be part of Carleton's research, teaching and study of sustainable energy, especially waste based energy conversion, and be available to undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to the Laboratory at the University, Waste Management will establish a Field Energy Centre at the proposed West Carleton Environmental Centre. These initiatives are contingent upon approval from the Ministry of Environment for the proposed West Carleton Environmental Centre.

Waste Management will also provide two $2,000 undergraduate scholarships, awarded annually beginning in 2010 for the next three years. The scholarships will be granted to one student studying renewable energy engineering and the other student studying environmental engineering.

"We are very pleased to be partnering with Carleton University on this exciting program," said Ross Wallace, site manager for the West Carleton Environmental Centre. "Combining Waste Management's industry leadership and expertise in waste based energy conversion with a leading Canadian university will be key for accelerating the growth of waste conversion technologies to help offset the need for non-renewable resources such as coal, natural gas and oil."

"By partnering with Waste Management on the proposed Field Energy Research Centre, the students and researchers at Carleton can help develop solutions to the global challenge of renewable clean energy," says Dr. Kim Matheson, Carleton's vice-president (Research and International).

"I am pleased that Waste Management has brought this green energy technology online and adding more renewable energy capacity to West Carleton," said Eli El-Chantiry, councilor for Ward 5 - West Carleton-March.

The state-of-the-art landfill gas to energy facility will collect landfill gas and convert it into green, renewable energy. The facility will be able to generate over six megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power 6,000 homes for a year. The project received its Commercial Certificate of Operation from the Ontario Power Authority under the Ontario Feed-in Tariff (FIT) Program earlier this month and will now provide renewable power to the electrical grid for the City of Ottawa.

"This new partnership between Waste Management and Carleton University is great news not only for Ottawa but for Ontario as a leader in clean, renewable energy. It gives me great hope that our youth, our next generation are involved in producing sustainable solutions to our provinces' energy needs," said Phil McNeely, parliamentary assistant to the Energy and Infrastructure and member of the provincial parliament for Ottawa - Orleans.

Today's engineered landfill is an environmentally safe waste disposal solution that minimizes the impact to the environment. Landfill gas which is created naturally as waste decomposes in a landfill, can either be destroyed through a flare or it can be captured, converted and used as a clean energy source.

"This landfill gas-to-energy facility is a win-win project for the community and Waste Management's landfill," says Remi Godin, market area gas operations manager for Eastern Canada. "The community benefits from the environmental benefits, and Waste Management will be able to turn a once-wasted commodity into a valuable energy resource."

The process to convert landfill gas to energy begins with the disposal of organic-rich solid waste into a landfill. As the waste decomposes, gas is produced and recovered by a series of extraction wells placed into the landfill. The wells are interconnected by a common collection system that transports the gas to a compression facility. There, the gas is processed to remove moisture before being delivered as fuel to an internal combustion engine, which drives a generator to produce electricity. The generator is connected to a transformer, which increases the voltage of the electricity to match that of the local electrical utility's distribution system.

Waste Management is the North American leader in recovering landfill gas to generate power. The company has 115 landfill-gas-to-energy facilities, including one in Quebec and another in development at its Petrolia landfill in southwestern Ontario. Together, these 115 facilities provide the equivalent of nearly 500 megawatts of electricity. The electricity generated is enough to power more than 400,000 homes and equivalent to saving nearly seven million barrels of oil per year.

Together with Waste Management's other renewable energy projects, the Ottawa facility will contribute to the company's ongoing corporate sustainability goals of doubling the amount of waste energy produced from the equivalent of one million homes today, to two million homes by 2020.

About Waste Management

Waste Management is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management and recycling services in North America. The company provides collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also the largest residential recycler and a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in North America. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. To learn more visit www.wm.com or www.thinkgreen.com.

For further information: Media: Ross Wallace, [phone], [email protected]; Media: Steve Blais, [phone] ext 1391, [email protected]