AUG 05

Last summer, we brought you the details of San Jose's "Green Vision" plan, where the city aspires to become 100 percent energy independent and waste-free by 2023.  One of the key components of that plan is a biogas plant that would be responsible for a large chunk of the city's electricity and stop waste from going into landfills.  Now, a year later, the San Jose City Council gave an initial go-ahead for the plant and the city is one step closer to making it a reality.

The biogas facility would be the country's first organics-to-energy biogas plant, a technology already being used in Germany and Italy.  The plant would create energy through breaking down food waste and also organic solid waste through dry anaerobic fermentation, creating methane.  The process is different because it's done without oxygen and breaks down solid waste that normally ends up in landfills, not just wet waste.  The Zanker Road Biogas facility would process 150,000 tons of the organic waste, producing electricity and compost that will be used as fertilizer.

The resulting electricity will power the water pollution plant and be sold to the grid.  The facility will be located between two solid-waste recovery and recycling plants, removing any chance of neighborhood complaints.

via USA Today

Comments (5)

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This is great
written by Brett, August 05, 2009

I've only recently been developing my interest in going green to something beyond simply recycling, and seeing something like this is just so impressive. It would be amazing for more cities to be having projects like this. Not only would we be improving the green credentials of the cities, but the plants would provide jobs!

Perhaps I'm being a bit wide-eyed here, but I really think this is great.

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Key component?
written by Markus, August 06, 2009

I am wondering how the biogas facility can be the key component if it has an input of only 150.000 tons of organic waste. The city of Munich in Germany recently built a dry fermenter biogas facility for kitchen and garden organic waste, which is collected from the households in separate garbage bins (http://www.awm-muenchen.de/fil...glisch.pdf) Currently it processes 25.000 tons of waste and produces electricity (from the biogas) for 1.600 households. The average household size in Munich is about two persons. So I assume that San Jose could get electricity for 25.000 persons out of 150.000 tons organic waste. This is only a small fraction of San Jose's population.

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Interesting
written by Justine Suh, August 06, 2009

The first step of a journey is always critical. I commend San Jose for taking the initiative to testing this out. Amazing that they are so proactive. Bravo!

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written by T, August 06, 2009

LA has a lot to learn from its neighbor it seems.

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written by Bob Wallace, August 06, 2009

Markus, electricity for 25k with a population of ~950k would mean about 3% of the city's power needs, so not "the" key component.

I'd say not even "one of the key components".

But every little bit helps, death of a thousand cuts, ....

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