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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/City+Plasco+sign+waste+energy+deal/7705248/story.html

Rod Bryden, president and CEO of Plasco Energy Group.
Photograph by: Pat McGrath , Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — The city has signed a 20-year, $180-million contract with Rod Bryden’s Plasco Energy Group, which will turn the region’s household waste into energy.
City hall announced the deal Saturday, after meetings Friday to finalize the agreement broke down.
Reasons for the breakdown in talks weren’t given, but Councillor Maria McRae, chair of the city’s environment committee, said in the release Saturday that “the city took rigorous steps to protect the interest of taxpayers when negotiating this contract.”
According to the deal, Plasco will process 109,500 tonnes of city waste annually. The 20-year contract has four five-year extensions, at the option of the city.
“The finalization of the commercial agreement represents an important milestone in the city’s ongoing partnership with Plasco Energy Group Inc.,” city manager Kent Kirkpatrick is quoted as saying in the news release.
The plan had originally been to sign the agreement Friday night, when Plasco’s Bryden got as far as city manager Kirkpatrick’s office for a final reading of the contract.
The meeting was on the anniversary of city council’s vote approving the contract’s general terms, a decision it made under pressure because Bryden wanted a signed contract to take to the investors he wants to finance the new plant. Both Bryden and city politicians had promised repeatedly throughout 2012 that the signed contract was just around the corner.
What kept the contract from being signed Friday wasn’t made public.
The city is to pay the Ottawa company $83.25 for every tonne of garbage it runs through its “plasma gasification” process. It’s supposed to take virtually any trash that comes off the back of a garbage truck and convert it at high temperatures into a gas that can be burned for electricity and a small quantity of that glassy slag that has uses similar to those of gravel.
There is still skepticism about Plasco’s technology, which is being tested at an experimental facility near the existing city dump. So the contract is to include numerous elements meant to protect the city if Plasco’s process can’t be made to work on an industrial scale, and to reward Plasco if it does.
For one thing, under the terms council approved, the city only pays Plasco for garbage it actually processes.
In recognition that the city is taking a chance on the company, it’s entitled to a small share of the revenues if Plasco goes on to build working plants elsewhere. And the city is also to be Plasco’s landlord on property close to the Trail Road municipal landfill.
The price is about double the city’s costs for just dumping garbage at the landfill, but the hope is that a working Plasco plant will postpone by decades the need to find a new landfill when the existing one fills up. That could, in the city’s own rough estimate, cost as much as $250 million before a new dump takes a single new load of trash. If Plasco’s process works, it would be utterly revolutionary in the world of garbage disposal.
Plasco expects to make money at both ends, accepting payment from the city for disposing of garbage and from the provincial government for selling electricity to the provincial power grid.
With files from David Reevely
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/City+Plasco+sign+waste+energy+deal/7705248/story.html#ixzz2FVu9IvwN
Rod Bryden, president and CEO of Plasco Energy Group.
Photograph by: Pat McGrath , Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — The city has signed a 20-year, $180-million contract with Rod Bryden’s Plasco Energy Group, which will turn the region’s household waste into energy.
City hall announced the deal Saturday, after meetings Friday to finalize the agreement broke down.
Reasons for the breakdown in talks weren’t given, but Councillor Maria McRae, chair of the city’s environment committee, said in the release Saturday that “the city took rigorous steps to protect the interest of taxpayers when negotiating this contract.”
According to the deal, Plasco will process 109,500 tonnes of city waste annually. The 20-year contract has four five-year extensions, at the option of the city.
“The finalization of the commercial agreement represents an important milestone in the city’s ongoing partnership with Plasco Energy Group Inc.,” city manager Kent Kirkpatrick is quoted as saying in the news release.
The plan had originally been to sign the agreement Friday night, when Plasco’s Bryden got as far as city manager Kirkpatrick’s office for a final reading of the contract.
The meeting was on the anniversary of city council’s vote approving the contract’s general terms, a decision it made under pressure because Bryden wanted a signed contract to take to the investors he wants to finance the new plant. Both Bryden and city politicians had promised repeatedly throughout 2012 that the signed contract was just around the corner.
What kept the contract from being signed Friday wasn’t made public.
The city is to pay the Ottawa company $83.25 for every tonne of garbage it runs through its “plasma gasification” process. It’s supposed to take virtually any trash that comes off the back of a garbage truck and convert it at high temperatures into a gas that can be burned for electricity and a small quantity of that glassy slag that has uses similar to those of gravel.
There is still skepticism about Plasco’s technology, which is being tested at an experimental facility near the existing city dump. So the contract is to include numerous elements meant to protect the city if Plasco’s process can’t be made to work on an industrial scale, and to reward Plasco if it does.
For one thing, under the terms council approved, the city only pays Plasco for garbage it actually processes.
In recognition that the city is taking a chance on the company, it’s entitled to a small share of the revenues if Plasco goes on to build working plants elsewhere. And the city is also to be Plasco’s landlord on property close to the Trail Road municipal landfill.
The price is about double the city’s costs for just dumping garbage at the landfill, but the hope is that a working Plasco plant will postpone by decades the need to find a new landfill when the existing one fills up. That could, in the city’s own rough estimate, cost as much as $250 million before a new dump takes a single new load of trash. If Plasco’s process works, it would be utterly revolutionary in the world of garbage disposal.
Plasco expects to make money at both ends, accepting payment from the city for disposing of garbage and from the provincial government for selling electricity to the provincial power grid.
With files from David Reevely
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/City+Plasco+sign+waste+energy+deal/7705248/story.html#ixzz2FVu9IvwN