Heat recovery that pays for itself

How small towns can simultaneously tackle landfill diversion and generate renewable energy

Project Duration: 2021 - 2022

LOCAL ENERGY GENERATION

Biogas and energy recovery Other renewable community energy systems Ontario

Generate 22,960 GJ of renewable energy per year

Approximately 40% of the wastewater treatment plant’s heat and electricity demand

Reduce 2,000,000 tonnes/year of CO2e emissions

Reduce 2,000,000 kg/year of CO2e emissions

Divert 4,140 tonnes/year of food waste from the landfill

Summary

The City of Timmins has stepped into new territory: turning organic waste into renewable energy and fertilizer. A feasibility study found that by blending food waste with sewage at the Mattagami Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP), enough energy could be produced to meet nearly half of the plant’s needs. With benefits such as diverting organic waste from landfill, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, producing renewable energy and fertilizing the land, the City will be helping to protect the outdoor environment its residents are proud of. The results show that even mid‑sized communities can turn waste into reliable energy. By using the infrastructure they already have, the City is creating environmental and economic value for the people of Timmins.

Quick stats

Generate 22,960 GJ of renewable energy per year, approximately 40% of the wastewater treatment plant’s heat and electricity demand

Reduce 2,000,000 kg/year of CO2e emissions

Divert 4,140 tonnes/year of food waste from the landfill

"Diverting waste from landfill is an important objective for the municipality, regardless of whether the material originates from residential or ICI sources. Treating ICI waste supports overall waste diversion goals, extends landfill lifespan, and contributes to broader environmental and sustainability objectives, which benefits the community as a whole."

Background

In 2021, the City completed a feasibility study that quantified residential and industrial/commercial/institutional (ICI) food waste in the local area and compared three waste treatment options:

Traditional composting.
Anaerobic digestion, which treats organic waste in oxygen-free tanks where microbes break it down to produce fertilizer and biogas that can be used for heating and renewable energy in the form of electricity or renewable natural gas.
Co-digestion, in this case a particular type of anaerobic digestion where sewage is blended with food waste at the City’s existing Mattagami WPCP.

The City worked with the Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA) to analyze co-digestion’s feasibility and found that it was the most cost-effective option.

The challenge

Despite identifying co-digestion as a viable way forward, the City of Timmins is tackling multiple goals at once with this project:

Increasing organic waste diversion from landfills,
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and
Improving organic waste receiving capacity in the region.

For medium-sized communities like Timmins, balancing finances with the vision of a circular economy can be more challenging because they benefit less from economies of scale than large cities.

The solution

The City analyzed five scenarios in blending food waste with sewage, each along a continuum from adding zero organic waste up to adding the maximum that could be treated at the plant. Each step along the continuum both increased renewable energy production and decreased potential emissions.

The analysis found that it was more feasible to produce renewable heat and electricity compared to renewable natural gas (RNG). The City required more organic waste and wastewater sludge than what was readily available for RNG production to be feasible. The renewable heat and electricity production scenarios carried the least technical and operational risks.

Results

The most feasible scenario co-digests 4,140 tonnes/year of residential and ICI organic waste that would otherwise go to landfill.
2,000,000 kg/year of CO2e emissions would be reduced at the landfill with the scenario’s diversion rate.
The co-digestion of residential and ICI food waste generates enough energy to cover 40% of the heating and 44% of the electricity demand at the plant.
Using the existing wastewater treatment plant reduces major capital spending and maximizes co-digestion’s cost effectiveness.
Using waste as a resource promotes a circular economy.

Lessons learned

Several practical lessons emerged from the City’s experience that may be useful to other communities considering co‑digestion. Early engagement, trusted partnerships and a strong understanding of local conditions were critical in developing a solution that was both feasible and supported by operators and the community.

Prioritize early stakeholder engagement to assess feedstock availability and competition in your area. Developing a relationship with stakeholders takes time and repeated follow-ups, so allocate sufficient schedule and budget from the outset.
Work with a partner who has strong ties to feedstock suppliers and gas off-takers: their access to private market data and credibility encourages stakeholder engagement. In this case, OCWA contributed regulatory, technical, operational and project delivery knowledge.
Rely on in-house operator expertise in order to understand the operational history of your wastewater treatment plant, evaluate system impacts and validate cost-saving assumptions.
It is easier to reliably reach expected energy production when there is little competition for organic waste receiving. There are no private organic waste receivers in the City of Timmins, which increases the likelihood of securing the estimated available food waste.
When there are neighbouring lands that could benefit from digestate, the project can maximize its environmental benefits. The City is near mining sites where the nutrient-rich digestate could be distributed to help with land rehabilitation.
When the community and the operations team see how the changes benefit everyone, projects gain forward momentum. Operators were made aware of the feasibility study and residents were surveyed on their likelihood of participating in an organics collection program.

Want to explore all GMF-funded projects? Check out the Projects Database for a complete overview of funded projects and get inspired by municipalities of all sizes, across Canada.

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Equitable climate adaptation starts with community

Relationships are key to responding to climate change

CLIMATE ADAPTATION

This article summarizes key insights from a recent webinar exploring equitable climate adaptation. An expert panel discussed examples, approaches and strategies around local climate adaptation through an equity lens, sharing insights into local climate priorities and resources to support community climate adaptation projects.

Many municipalities are beginning to centre equity in their responses to climate change. Equitable adaptation involves understanding the history and context of the systems we work in—and recognizing that many are systems of privilege and inequality. It means finding new ways of thinking about things and new ways to do them.

Doing so means building relationships: engaging, collaborating and partnering with equity-owed groups to ensure they get what they deserve.

Emmay Mah, executive director of Toronto Environmental Alliance, suggests that municipalities look at the “partnerships they need to have in place with community agencies, organizations and neighborhood groups to protect residents in extreme situations, but also to build community climate resilience over time.”

But this work can take a long time, and as Ewa Jackson, managing director of ICLEI Canada, points out, it isn’t always an easy fit with the way municipal projects are typically designed, funded and administrated.

At the same time, the climate is lending a real sense of urgency to get these projects.

“These are no longer hypotheticals,” says Rachel Mitchell, then-senior manager of programs at Clean Foundation. We're having to deal with climate impacts at an increased frequency, certainly with the severity of the impacts as well.”

Brad Badelt, then-director of sustainability for the City of Vancouver, says equity-focused climate adaptation is an area that the city is still learning about, but one that it’s already “playing catch-up” with too.

Seeing adaptation through an equity lens

Mah says it’s critical that the well-being of the communities that are directly and/or disproportionately impacted by climate change are placed at the centre of municipal climate adaptation plans.

What does that look like? Badelt describes a tree-planting project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood as “a small but really concrete example of shifting practices to focus on adaptation measures where they are most needed.”

The area is dominated by concrete and asphalt, making its residents very vulnerable to the urban heat island effect during Vancouver’s now regular heatwaves. Over a few years, the city shifted from planting as many trees all over as possible everywhere to focusing more on areas like this one, where planting is much more difficult.

Planting here is also more expensive, because they city has to remove concrete to make tree wells. “There's a lot of maintenance involved, but obviously the need and the benefits are much higher here,” says Badelt.

But equitable adaptation projects don’t always have to be about physical infrastructure. Social infrastructure is equally important.

It's really important that local governments take up the responsibility of properly resourcing frontline community infrastructure - Emmay Mah, Toronto Environmental Alliance

Leveraging existing social infrastructure

Mitchell says a good way to engage with equity-owed groups is to first engage with the organizations that work closely with underrepresented groups, even when there’s not an obvious climate connection. “Maybe it's the United Way or another group that's working with under-housed individuals,” she says.

Mah agrees, suggesting that a good place to start is by looking at existing social infrastructure: mutual aid networks, community support models and neighbours helping neighbours. These structures, Mah notes, are prime tools for multi-solving during a crisis.
Mah outlines some research Toronto Environmental Alliance did (with support from the City of Toronto and the Atmospheric Fund), which found community organizations that had already done some work on preparedness or capacity-building for emergencies were able to pivot much more quickly to support residents in a crisis.

For example, community volunteers in Toronto’s St. James Town’s high rises had started training to be prepared for an extreme weather event before the pandemic. When it hit, they were able to spring into action, reaching out to residents in their buildings who needed support, going floor to floor to deliver food and checking in with isolated seniors.

After seeing how effective these community responses were, the City of Toronto committed to dedicating resources for local support networks when it adopted its new net-zero strategy, recognizing them as cornerstones of social and physical infrastructure.
Mah says they’ll keep working work with the city to look at how these can be integrated into climate resilience plans, calling it “a work in progress.”

Making adaptation project design and funding more equitable

If we want municipal adaptation projects to be truly equitable, there is still a lot about them that may need to change.

Jackson points out that municipal adaptation project design can be at odds with a focus on equity, which is based on shifting the balance of power. Shifting power requires building trust, which takes time, but many municipal projects face accelerated timelines. Building relationships in a time crunch is close to impossible—especially with groups with long histories of inequity and marginalization.

“Bringing people together to collaborate only in phase one or phase three when you need something is, by definition, transactional,” says Jackson. “Equitable climate adaptation or equity in anything can't be transactional. There needs to be a minimum degree of collaboration. Otherwise, it's just consultation, which is very different than equity-building.”

Jackson suggests using more flexible models, like the agile project design method, but recognizes that funding models may need more agility to match.

Another solution is finding ways to get over some of the legal hurdles of empowering community groups to do more. Again, leveraging social infrastructure that is already in place. This thought was echoed by the other participants.

“It's really important that local governments to take up the responsibility of properly resourcing frontline community infrastructure”, Mah says. “And that translates to funders of this work as well.”

Watch the related webinar