(Boursier.com) – Waga Energy won the call for tenders launched by the county of Steuben (New York State, United States) to upgrade the gas from its waste storage site, located in the municipality of Bath. Under the terms of the contract signed on December 30, 2021, the French group will build on the site a purification unit using its patented WAGABOX technology, which makes it possible to produce biomethane, a renewable substitute for fossil natural gas, from the gas emitted by landfill waste (landfill gas).
The WAGABOX unit will be commissioned at the Bath site in March 2023. It will process 1,600 m3 / h of raw gas and produce 60 GWh of biomethane per year, equivalent to the consumption of around 4,000 American households. It will avoid the emission of 13,500 tonnes of CO2eq each year.
Waga Energy will finance the construction of the unit and operate it for at least 20 years, under the contract signed with the county of Steuben for the supply of raw gas. The unit will be built in North America, with the exception of a component of the cryogenic distillation module which will be imported from France.
The biomethane produced at the Bath site will be injected directly into the local gas network, and sold to a private operator under a long-term energy purchase contract, on the model of power purchase agreements (PPA ) used in renewable electricity projects. The revenues generated will be shared with the County of Steuben.
Steuben is one of 62 counties in New York State. Located 300 kilometers northwest of New York City, it has a population of approximately 100,000. Its storage site can receive up to 150,000 tonnes of waste per year. In July 2020, the county launched a call for tenders to recover the gas emitted by landfill waste. This gas is now captured and burned in a flare to prevent direct emissions of methane into the atmosphere.
The result of 15 years of development, WAGABOX technology combines membrane filtration and cryogenic distillation to recover the gas emitted by buried waste in the form of biomethane. Five years after the start of the first WAGABOX unit, Waga Energy operates 10 units in France and eleven more are under construction in France, Spain and Canada. Steuben County will be the first in the United States to benefit from this innovation.
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