By EnergyTech Staff

Anaergia’s subsidiary Kent County Bioenergy Facility has received a US$5 million grant from the Michigan Public Service Commission to develop the Kent County Bioenergy Facility, which is a project worth US$380 million in partnership with the Kent County Department of Public Works (DPW). 

The Kent County Bioenergy Facility, planned as the anchor tenant at the Sustainable Business Park, is designed to increase recycling, reduce Kent County’s dependence on landfills, create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and produce carbon-negative renewable fuel.

 The Kent County DPW will seek an approval from the Kent County Board of Public Works to proceed with the project in July. Post approval from the Kent County Board of Commissioners, the project is expected to be fully operational by early 2027.

“Kent County has a real opportunity to create a better world for future generations by building the Kent County Bioenergy Facility and Sustainable Business Park,” said director at the Kent County Department of Public Works Dar Baas.

Designed to help Kent County divert 90 per cent of trash from the local landfill by 2030, the facility anticipates to transfer 50 per cent of municipal solid waste, initially. The process will help reduce methane emissions, while recovering organic material in the waste and converting it into renewable natural gas and fertilizer. 

“Over 40 per cent of what is landfilled in the US creates methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is responsible for at least 30 per cent of global warming to date—so projects like the one being developed by Kent County Bioenergy Facility will do no less than help save the planet,” said CEO of Anaergia Brett Hodson.

Many environmental experts contend that methane is multiple times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Last month, Anaergia announced it will provide technologies that will enable Monterey One Water, the wastewater utility of northern Monterey County, California, to make renewable energy from food waste as well as wastewater. The project will significantly expand anaerobic digestion capacity at Monterey One Water’s Regional Treatment Plant (RTP) in Marina, according to reports.

This will allow the utility to receive and co-digest food waste in existing digesters currently used to process wastewater biosolids. When anaerobically digested, the waste produces renewable biogas, which is then used to generate electricity and heat at the Monterey One plant.