Page 23 - GBC winter 2015

In the setting of a golf course, grass clippings, food waste from the club house, and sewage could all be fed into a small affordable digester to produce heat, steam, electricity, and vehicle fuel. Such adoption would decrease both the club’s carbon footprint and its overall energy expenses. Who would not want to get off the grid?
We are neither talking theory nor selling smoke and mirrors when we advocate embracing biomethane as a low hanging avail- able energy source. Other countries have long recognized the power of Biomethane and cemented their prosperity by rehabilitating/ embracing her.
GREEN TECHNOLOGY
Golf course associations and golf courses around the world are look- ing at ways to improve the sport’s environmental criteria. As golf courses use fertiliser to keep the turf green and use power for the maintenance machinery and the golf carts, there are many areas where sustainability of the sport can be addressed.
In addition, most golf courses have clubhouses which produce food waste. Did we mention that golf courses also generate green wastes such as grass clippings, leaves, brush and other vegetative trimmings. Harvesting biogas from the decomposition of such organic waste is a logical next step.
Our recommendation for golf course owners is simple: buy a small-scale anaerobic digester (AD)/biogas producing plant, switch from waste collection, large commercial fertilizer purchases, and energy sources, and embrace waste/ biogas as a natural cost-saving resource.
Investment in an anaerobic digester (AD) involves relatively little technology risk, but it is
advised that you carefully choose an engineering company to design and build the digester, paying particular attention to their work on similar projects.
The technology for biogas deployment is certainly affordable with short payback periods, unlike the terms for biodiesel/bioethanol production. It is these “smart clean- tech economics” that will drive most owners to make the invest- ment in AD and tame this `biogas.’
BIOMETHANE USE WORLDWIDE
China: Beijing began promoting basic backyard biogas production facilities for rural families in the 1930s. Today, over 30 million house- holds in China have biogas digest- ers that convert waste into clean- burning fuel. Biogas accounts for about 1.2% of China’s total energy use, mostly replacing biomass and fossil fuels used for cooking in rural households.
EU:ThefirstGermansewagetreat- ment plant to feed biogas into the public gas supply began in 1920 and the first large agricultural biogas plant began operating in 1950.
In 2014, the 7,944 biogas plants in Germany generated about 27,6 billion kWh of electricity, thereby providing about 7.9 million house- holds with environmentally-friendly energy.
At the same time, around 150 plants in Germany feed a volume of approximately 600 billion cubic metres (m3) of biomethane into the network every year. This natural gas grid is also fed into in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Germany has the largest number of biogas installations compared to any other country and is the undis- puted world leader. Biomethane is mainly used as a transportation fuel in Sweden. The public trans- port buses in more than 10 Swedish cities run on biomethane.
USA: In the U.S., United Parcel Service Inc. recently agreed to use renewable natural gas from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. for some of its delivery fleet, as part of its plan to drive one billion miles using alter- native fuel by the end of 2017.
In August 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued two proposals to further reduce emissions of methane-rich gas from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. The proposals would require that new, modified and existing landfills capture and control landfill gas at emission levels nearly a third lower than current requirements.
Canada: Closer to home, described as Canada’s largest renewable natural gas facility, a landfill in Terrebonne (2015, Quebec) reported that it produces enough gas to fuel 1,500 trucks for 20 years. The facility is designed to process approximately 10,000 cubic feet per minute of incoming landfill gas. In May 2015, FortisBC customers on Vancouver Island, the Sunshine
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