Brent Kearney

Last year I wrote about Plasma Arc Waste Disposal, which converts waste to energy for large cities. I asked Plasco whether they plan on scaling down the technology to handle smaller municipalities, and as I recall, their reply was essentially: not for awhile.

At least one company has developed technology to convert garbage to energy on a smaller scale. IST Energy’s Green Energy Machine (GEM) is an affordable trash-to-energy conversion system suitable for operations such as office complexes, hotels, malls, restaurants, college/university campuses.

Priced at $850,000 USD, GEM converts up to 3 tons per day of consumer and industrial trash — paper, wood, plastic, food, agricultural waste — into usable electric energy. According to the company, the GEM system uses only 10% of the energy that it produces. It generates 40 kWe of electricity and 187 kWth of heat per day.

Aside from the huge benefit of waste elimination, the heat and energy production could dramatically reduce energy bills, especially in cold environments like Canada. According to the company, these cost reductions should pay for the initial investment in 3 to 4 years.

Although the GEM system does emit CO2, when compared to traditional landfill waste disposal, there is a large net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. With new, more aggressive CO2 reductions targets for many governments, this technology could be an easy fix to reduce some of the pressure they face.