Chapter 6 – Sustainability
Metro Vancouver Waste Incinerator “Waste-to-Energy Facility”
One of the topics we covered in our course in June 2019 was Metro Vancouver’s Waste to Energy Facility. Here is a graphic from the Metro Vancouver’s fact sheet.
In an attempt to nail down the costs, Jennifer Kirkey used the contact email address. Here is the reply from Sarah Wellman, P.Eng. Senior Engineer, Solid Waste Operations. “Thank you for your interest in Metro Vancouver’s Waste-to-Energy Facility. Please see the following link for the Waste-to-Energy Facility 2018 financial report. Please contact me if you have any other questions, or if you are interested in a tour of the facility.” Sarah.Wellman@metrovancouver.org
Here is a summary of the 2018 numbers
The cost to operate the facility was $20,497,223.
Please note that disposing of the fly ash was $1,385,142 of that cost.
The facility made $5,584,341 by selling the electricity it made.
That works out to a cost of disposal of $58.16 per tonne. Please note that it is a metric tonne = 1000 kg = 2204 pounds.
Here is a link to the facility web page.
https://www.covanta.com/Our-Facilities/Covanta-Burnaby
You can take a virtual tour here.
https://www.covanta.com/Covanta-Map/Virtual-Tour
Here is a photo of the facility from the Covanta web page.