After months of negotiations, Énergir and the American residual materials giant Waste Management announced on Thursday an agreement to produce renewable natural gas from the Sainte-Sophie landfill site to supply the gas network of the former Gaz Subway.
Waste Management (WM) plans to invest more than $150 million to develop an environmental and energy complex at its Sainte-Sophie landfill in the Laurentians. The site will be able to convert biogas from the decomposition of residual materials into renewable natural gas (RNG).
Subsequently, the GNR will be injected and distributed in the Énergir network. To do this, the construction of a high-pressure pipe and an injection station to connect the WM facilities to the Énergir network is necessary. This component will add 50 million to the bill for the project.
Ultimately, this partnership should make it possible to inject up to 80 million cubic meters of RNG into the Énergir network each year, which represents more than 20% of the volume necessary to achieve the government target and that of ‘Énergir to distribute 5% of RNG in the gas network by 2025.
According to WM estimates, processing 50,000 tons of organic matter at the Sainte-Sophie site will reduce up to 140,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, the equivalent of the emissions of 55,000 gasoline-powered cars.
Owner of two technical landfills in Quebec, WM has similar RNG production facilities in the United States, including the one in Louiseville.
The agreement comes after months of negotiations between Énergir and WM. The duty reported this fall the discussions between the two groups who had not wanted to detail the project to come.
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