Nathan Clarke is the Regional Manager for sewerage and landfill services at Nelson City Council. He brings 30 years of experience in managing waste, much of which was spent helping international organisations to find waste solutions, including minimisation and also making use of the waste to produce energy.
Now the Nelson and Tasman region are benefiting from this expertise as part of their joint Waste Management and Minimisation plan.
Nathan will be talking about some of their planned and ongoing projects at the Electrify Nelson Expo event on Saturday 29 August. These include waste reduction and the avoidance of waste generation, as well as innovative schemes to reduce the emissions of biogenic methane from landfill waste and use that to turn it into much needed energy.
While the technology has been around for a while, there are energy pressures within New Zealand today which are a result of depleting gas reserves, as well the increasing price of oil which are increasing interest in this technology.
Using energy produced from our waste not only helps the environment but it also enables us to be self-reliant in our energy supplies, providing much needed energy resilience for our communities.
One example of this work is the use of captured methane from the York Valley Landfill to power Nelson Hospital’s heating and hot water, displacing coal which was previously being used. They are currently looking for other partnerships
where they can provide bottled methane for businesses to use in their energy programmes. As Nathan says:
“The great thing about making use of the gas produced from landfill to support businesses in the region, is that we can also use it to begin to electrify our own landfill materials, and reduce emissions even further.”
There is also work being done with waste water plants to further leverage those assets, such as Bell Island Waste Water Treatment Plant where there will be a 30-hectare solar array installed to generate an estimated 45 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually to feed into the local power grid.
According to Nathan, there are further assets which can be leveraged to produce energy for the region.
What Nathan hopes is that people coming to the Electrify Nelson Expo on 29 August will learn exactly what is possible with the infrastructure in the region, and how businesses can partner with them to reduce their own emissions and costs for their energy supplies.
Electrify Nelson Expo takes place on Saturday 29 August at the Annesbrook Event Centre. Entry is free and visitors can explore stalls, expert speakers, live demonstrations, EV test drives and practical advice on everything from solar and batteries to home energy efficiency and electric transport. Nathan Clarke will be speaking as a part of the event.
