the most risk when there really wasn’t very much in place,” he says, admitting, “Securing debt for a project like this is very difficult, primarily because you need long-term waste supply contracts.” A PARTNER WITH POCKETS Eventually, ZooShare realized it had to sell equity in the project to strengthen its financial foundation and get the project built. It was at that point that the project was separated into its own entity, and a new Limited Partnership was formed, with EnerForge as the equity partner. (EnerForge is a wholly owned subsid-iary of Oshawa Power & Utilities Corp., which, up until Spring 2020, was known as Oshawa PUC Energy Services.) Thus, in November 2019, officials and dignitaries gathered to celebrate the stra-tegic partnership that, according to the press release, would make “significant greenhouse gas reductions a reality at the Toronto Zoo.” Work could get underway to build the project that would convert 2,000 tonnes of zoo manure – plus some 15,000 tonnes of food waste from gro -cery stores, restaurants and other busi-nesses around the Greater Toronto Area – into enough renewable energy to power about 250 homes while reducing GHG emissions by as much as 20,000 tonnes per year. “This first-of-its-kind project is ZooShare’s end storage tank, where biogas and digestate are stored before use. Photo: W. Schroder. symbolic of Canada’s newly emerging green economy, where structurally dif-ferent organizations interplay in unique ways to generate sustainable bottom lines for all involved,” said Ivano Labricciosa, president and CEO of EnerForge. “Our team is proud to bring our expertise in low-carbon, distributed energy forward to enable this remarkable initiative”. “And that’s where the partnership re-ally comes in,” Labricciosa told us a few months later. “It was their concept, their belief in this particular renewable initia-tive [...] but didn’t have the funds to push the project over the finish line.” He continued: “We realized this partic-ular project is right up our alley in terms of being able to do renewables and show our ability to deliver projects on time and on cost; and to be able to manage them, and run and operate them. So we’re really excited about it.” FIKE DFI™ AVAILABLE IN SIZES UP TO DN800 (32 INCHES) A Flap Valve You Can Trust Tested to exceed EN16447 standards. Validated to work in real-world applications. Because so much is at stake.™ CB_Fike_Summer21_CSA.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2021-07-13 8:08 AM 19
Canadian Biomass Summer 2022: Page 19
