Waste Management announces start of new, renewable energy facility at West
Carleton Environmental Centre

Facility will provide over 6 MW of renewable energy to the City of Ottawa

OTTAWA, May 7 /CNW Telbec/ - Waste Management today announced that it has received its Commercial Certificate of Operation from the Ontario Power Authority under the Ontario Feed-in Tariff (FIT) Program and will now provide renewable power to the electrical grid for the City of Ottawa.

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.

"This facility will benefit the local environment and economy because it will help offset the need for non-renewable resources such as coal, natural gas and oil," said Ross Wallace, site manager for the West Carleton Environmental Centre.

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.

"This is a significant milestone for the FIT program and another major step in our strategy to create a clean, reliable electricity system," said Colin Andersen Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Power Authority.

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]