By
TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff
 |
| The Shun Pike facility began processing liquid waste such as sewage and manure this summer. (ecoRI News) |
Rhode Island’s compost
law, passed in 2014, requires large institutions such as
supermarkets and food makers to divert their organic scrap to a farm, food
pantry, compost facility or anaerobic digester, as long as such a facility
exists within 15 miles.
So far, only a smaller-scale compost facility is
operating in Charlestown — Earth
Care Farm has been composting food scrap for 40 years. The
Compost Plant has proposed a facility in Warren.
In recent years, smaller digesters have been built in Massachusetts that service a single facility, like a Stop & Shop distribution warehouse in Freetown, Mass.
In
Dartmouth, Mass., a 12-ton-per-day food scrap to biogas anaerobic digestion
facility opened in 2014 at the Crapo
Hill Landfill. A single digester, or digesters, intended to serve an
entire state or region has yet to materialize.
Blue Sphere Corp., an Israeli-based
company, is poised to be the first. Planning for its Johnston
facility began in 2012. Construction started in 2014.
This
summer, the facility on Shun Pike began processing liquid waste such as sewage
and manure. Solid food waste was added more recently, to build up the proper
bacteria level in one of the two 2.5-million-gallon “digester” tanks.
Each tank acts like a giant stomach,
breaking down organic material and generating a methane-based biogas that is
burned for electricity. That electricity is one of three revenue streams for
the facility.
The biogas fuels one of two generators with a total capacity of
3.2 megawatts.
The power is purchased by National Grid under a 15-year
power-purchase deal. The residual organic material is sold as a soil amendment.
A tipping fee is charged based on the weight of organic material when it
arrives at the plant.
Blue Sphere has contracts to take
organic scrap from food manufactures, and hopes to attract more customers in
Rhode Island and Massachusetts, such as seafood processors.
The plant looks to
be operational as Rhode Island’s compost law expands in 2018 to include smaller
institutions that produce more than 54 tons of food scrap annually, such as
cafeterias and large restaurants. The success of the Johnston operation could
inspire other states with compost laws like Massachusetts and Connecticut to follow.
“My sense is there is a wait-and-see
attitude on how well [Blue Sphere] does. To see if it’s a successful model. I
think this is their test case for the Northeast,“ said Mark Dennen, supervising
environmental scientist for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental
Management (DEM).
Blue Sphere is acquiring and building
digesters in Europe and Israel, and looks poised to establish markets in
neighboring states by partnering with other businesses.
The company is close to
completing a second, sightly larger digester near its U.S. headquarters in
Charlotte, N.C. Two more digesters are planned for North Carolina; Blue Sphere
owns four digesters in Italy. Three are planned for England, one for Israel and
one for the Netherlands.
In Johnston, Blue Sphere shares
ownership of the project with National Grid and hedge fund York Capital
Management, based in New York City.
Dennen said DEM will help institutions
comply with food-diversion regulations once the Johnston facility is
operational. Eventually, he expects Rhode Island and the rest of the country to
catch up with Europe, where most businesses and residents have bins for food
scrap in addition to ones for trash and recycling.
