Faced with excessively high costs and imposing technical challenges, Ville de Laval is putting an end to its biomethanation plant project, which had been the subject of discussions for years. In an inflationary context, the infrastructure would have cost more than 400 million, estimates the mayor Stéphane Boyer, who promises within a few months a “new strategy” to process the materials.
The news was announced to elected Laval officials on Tuesday, late afternoon. However, the city’s executive committee officially endorsed the decision. “Today we realize that there are too many financial and technical risks. Let’s be clear: we are keeping the same ambition to reduce our GHGs, but that will not be done through biomethanization, but through another strategy that we will present in the coming months,” explains Mr. Boyer in an interview with The Press.
In 2019, when an initial tender launched to build the plant had attracted no bidders, the project was valued at 244 million. Today, due to high inflation, supply issues and the overheating of the construction market all over the world, “we are over 400 million,” says the mayor.
“I want us to be pragmatic and efficient with citizens’ money,” he explains. On the contrary, I don’t want 400 million citizens’ taxes to be invested in a high-risk project. You have to understand that since 2010, when Quebec gave several grants for this, several cities have tried their hand at biomethanation. But in almost every case there were cost overruns. Very few projects are successful today,” continues Mr. Boyer, believing that the plant simply “didn’t have a favorable cost-benefit ratio”.
What citizens want is not necessarily a biogas plant. Above all, it is a city that is working hard to reduce GHGs.
Stéphane Boyer, Mayor of Laval
Other options to explore
Despite this setback, Ville de Laval maintains that there are still several other “less expensive options”. “First, it must be said that we will maintain the composting of organic matter, which has an enviable recovery rate. And we have enough treatment capacity in Laval, which has not always been the case,” says Isabelle Deguire, from the City’s Environment Department.
To date, the material recovery rate is 65% for brown bins in Laval, as of 2022. The target for this was to reach 60% in 2025, according to the Laval Residual Materials Management Strategy ( SLGMR).
But that will not be all, insists Mme Disguise. “On the other hand, we will for example look at the level of spreading in agricultural areas, in restoring degraded sites or even seeing if we can send to treatment centers rather than burying”, continues the expert.
The main challenge behind a biomethanization plant, according to her, remains the “co-digestion of materials” which are table residues, soil residues and sludge from purification plants. “Blending these different types of materials together, at the process and system level, is really very important in terms of costs. It meant a lot of resources to make sure we had a performance like the one we expected,” admits M.me Disguise.
Since the beginning of the discussions surrounding the biomethanization plant, the City of Laval claims to have spent 5 million, mainly on studies, estimates and other technical documents. “It’s a shame today to see that this money has been lost in some way. But at the same time, it’s better to lose 5 million today than to lose 10 times more tomorrow,” summarizes Mayor Boyer in an interview.
He says the situation demonstrates that more generally, his municipality needs to “develop smarter.” “We need to do more multipurpose projects. In other words, if we invest in a building project X, this building must be able to have more than one function. In our parks, for example, rather than making a tailor-made community centre, can we not revise our plans? It is to do more with less, ”concludes the chosen one.