From the start, groups like Alberta Energy, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development and the City of Lethbridge have been amongst ECB’s biggest supporters.
“We helped them put together [their] case for alternative energy,” says Cheryl Dick, CEO of Economic Development Lethbridge. Part of that included hosting 10 meetings throughout the region to educate southern Albertans about biogas plants.
While generating biogas from materials destined for the landfill removes the technology from ethical issues surrounding the conversion of agricultural food crops into ethanol or biodiesel, misconceptions remain. “We’ve run into people who do not want us to locate near them,” says Hurlburt. Smell is one concern, he acknowledges, but a bio-filtration system will keep the surrounding area relatively odour-free. And the St. Mary River Irrigation District withdrew its objection to the Lethbridge plant after the company outlined how its stormwater management system and monitoring network would ensure groundwater purity.
For the Southern Alberta Alternative Energy Partnership (SAAEP), of which Economic Development Lethbridge is a founding member, ECB’s progress bodes well. Since late 2005, SAAEP, which promotes local alternative energy business and technology development, has been relying on the region’s natural strengths to attract projects based on renewable sources of all kinds. “We have all the natural resources, inputs and location to produce renewable energy,” says Dick. In fact, she adds, southern Alberta – and particularly Lethbridge – is already a leader in wind energy. Besides the area’s several wind farms, Lethbridge College provides the only wind turbine technician certification in Canada. “If [their] purpose is to look at any part of Alberta that could respond as an advocate for alternative energy, [companies] should look here,” says Dick.
Others besides ECB have already done just that, using the region as a base for unconventional energy projects. John Koliaska, president and CEO of Lethbridge-based JK Trucking, also serves as vice-president of business development for Kyoto Fuels Corp., the biodiesel refinery next door. If all went according to plan, Kyoto will have recently begun to produce 66 million litres of biodiesel annually for use by the trucking company and sale across Canada, the U.S. and overseas.
This kind of activity, especially when coupled with ECB’s success to date, should help SAAEP galvanize its reputation as a leader in the burgeoning renewable energy sector, as well as add to the economic diversification of a region that, far removed from the epicentre of the last boom, has always had to carve out its own niche. When coal gave way to oil as Alberta’s main energy crop, Lethbridge, with origins as a mining town, reinvented itself as a manufacturing, education and agricultural service centre.
“We don’t have oilsands,” says Robert Tarleck, mayor of Lethbridge. “We’re not in the heart of oil country, but we have natural resources you need for alternative energy. We have lots of wind and sun. We have opportunities for geothermal energy and biofuels.”
Delving into the alternative energy industry is just another example of the region’s ability to adapt. It’s also an attitude and approach to development that Tarleck thinks the rest of Alberta could learn from. “We need to take a longer view of our future, something Lethbridge has been doing for decades,” he says.
But to do that, you need to think bigger, even if that involves something the unimaginative might simply dismiss as “waste.”
For Hurlburt and ECB, the Lethbridge plant is only the beginning. He envisions the landscape of southern Alberta – and, for that matter, that of the nation – one day dotted with biogas plants, just like Germany. “We’re only using 50,000 tonnes a year,” says Hurlburt of his future plant. “Estimates for manure produced in the County of Lethbridge are between six and 13 million tonnes per year.”
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