Hartford Business Journal

With CT's trash future in flux, food-waste recycler hopes for bigger role By Matt Pilon mpilon@hartfordbusiness.com P rocessing facilities that convert food and other organic waste into energy and compost are a key piece of Connecticut's strategy to reduce the amount of garbage it burns, but investment in those plants has fallen well short of what is needed to meet the state's goals. Connecticut's only anaerobic digester, run by Quantum Biopower, opened four years ago in Southington, but not much has happened since. Several other proposed digester projects have stalled out due to finan- cial troubles or other challenges, and state incentives have thus far failed to attract investment in more plants. Quantum can process about 40,000 tons a year, which is well short of the 300,000 tons of annual digester capacity state environmen- tal officials say is needed to divert a meaningful volume of organics from the broader waste stream by 2024. Despite the lackluster perfor- mance, there are reasons to believe things will pick up. Other states are starting to see renewed interest in building anaero- bic digesters, including from deep- pocketed private equity backers. For example, Maryland-based Bio- energy DevCo is using a $106-million investment from Newlight Partners to build a 100,000-ton capacity anaerobic digester in its home state, while also proposing facilities in New York, New Jersey and Washington. Investment in such plants is spurred by various regulatory and market dynamics, including Califor- nia's financial incentives for biometh- ane — also known as renewable natural gas — which can be produced by in- and out-of- state anaerobic digesters. There's also growing demand from private compa- nies like UPS that want the fuel for their natural gas- powered vehicle fleets. And states like Connecticut have mandates that require large food-waste producers, such as grocery stores and manufacturers, to separate their organics and ship them to com- posters or anaerobic digesters. "Anaerobic digestion has a bright future, but it's more a question of tim- ing," said Brian Paganini, Quantum's vice president and managing director. Meanwhile, the cost of getting rid of garbage is only rising, which promises to spur greater interest in removing more of the 500,000 tons of food and organics that end up in Connecticut's waste stream each year. The state's largest waste-to-energy plant, which burns one-third of Con- necticut's garbage, is on its last legs. Dozens of municipalities that send their trash to Hartford's aging Mid- Connecticut plant recently deemed a $330-million redevelopment plan for the facility to be too costly, throwing the project — and the state's overall waste-management strategy — into uncertainty. If that redevelopment doesn't happen, Connecticut will likely send far more of its garbage to out-of-state landfills. "We need to let some pressure out of the balloon and give our waste sys- tem a bit of a rest," Paganini said. "A great way to do that is to unlock the organic load that is in our garbage." Gabrielle Frigon, a supervising envi- ronmental analyst at the Department of Energy and Environmental Protec- tion (DEEP), said the agency plans to revisit and update its waste strategy in the next 18 months, but anaerobic digestion remains a priority, as does the desire to limit landfilling. "I believe we are still very support- ive of anaerobic digestion," Frigon said. "We need the capacity and we need the buildout of composting fa- cilities, whether aerobic or anaerobic." Connecticut has provided various incentives to encourage develop- ment of anaerobic digesters. The state has placed the technology into its highest tier of renewable energy generation, alongside solar and wind, Southington land owner re-ups waste-digester permit A Pennsylvania food-recy- cling company that won approvals six years ago to build an anaerobic digester facility in Southington says it is no longer involved in the project. Turning Earth could not raise the financing it needed for the $25-million development, which suffered from the Connecticut legislature's energy funding raid in 2018, forcing the Connecticut Green Bank to pull back $4 million in financing for the project. "Unfortunately the project will not be going forward, which is a shame for the Southington commu- nity, Connecticut and the environ- ment," Turning Earth Executive Vice President Amy McCrae Kessler said in a recent email. Despite that, the owner of the 111 Spring St. parcel the facility was to be sited on recently applied to renew the project per- mit, which expired about a year ago. The special permit for Senco LLC, which has owned the property since 2008, is slated for a May 19 public hearing. Senco is controlled by Farmington-based Calco Construc- tion founder John Senese, who did not respond to requests for com- ment for this story. It's unclear whether Senco is working with another organics recycler. Quantum Biopower, whose digester is located less than two miles down the road, said it is not involved in the project. No major work has taken place on the site, according to Robert A. Phil- lips, the town's director of planning and community development. Phillips said the latest application is simply a re-approval of the previ- ous plan. He said he doesn't know if Senco plans to build the facility soon, or if the permit renewal is meant to market the property to another operator or buyer. A rendering of a now defunct digester facility planned in Southington. RENDERING | CONTRIBUTED Brian Paganini, Vice President and Managing Director, Quantum Biopower PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED An outside view of Quantum Biopower's Southington anaerobic digester, which remains the sole such facility in Connecticut, despite efforts by policymakers to incentivize further investment in the organics-recycling technology. 12 Hartford Business Journal • May 18, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com

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