Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, committee members, for allowing us to present today. It's definitely a privilege on our part.
Waste to Energy Canada Inc. is an innovative supplier of patented and proprietary technology, specifically in the field of gasification. Very quickly, what we do is take a mixed group of waste streams, and I'll explain those in a second, and we place those waste streams into a combustion chamber. However, we do not combust the waste. We keep it at a sub-stoic level, and then draw a synthetic gas off that waste. Then we combust the gas at a higher temperature. This gives us a very clean gas and emission profile, emission profiles that are able to meet and better any emission standards that are currently available and regulatory compliance levels in the world globally.
We have a very long in-service history with the technology, going back 15 years, and have deployments as far out as the Ronald Reagan ballistic missile base on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, down to the Cayman Islands, Wake Island, the North Slope of Alaska, oil and mining camps, and smaller communities. We also are up in Canada, just recently, with a smaller deployment of a 1.5-tonne system for the community of Old Crow above the Arctic Circle in the Yukon. That system was flown in by a Hercules.
We are able to deploy the technology in a very modular and scalable fashion, and by that I mean from one tonne a day of waste through to multiples of hundreds of tonnes, upwards of 500 tonnes a day. We work on a decentralized model, which primarily means that we eliminate the need for communities to hub or transport their waste. We're able to drop a system into any community globally and provide its waste management solutions in-house rather than it having to centralize and go to larger systems like the mass burn system. We can match the technology to any community or industry size and its growth model, again through the scalability and the modular nature of the technology.
We provide turnkey solutions in waste management. We are able to effectively destroy and provide recovery through MSW, so we're able to take all forms of municipal solid waste. By this I mean there's no presorting required if that technology is not available. The technology we own is able to take the waste directly from the garbage truck, if you will.
We also provide services in that the technology can effectively manage hazardous waste and medical waste; waste water, which is raw sewage; abattoir or slaughterhouse wastes; biomass, which is more of a homogenous waste stream, for instance, pine-beetle kill, spruce-beetle kill. We provide a closed-loop approach in many of our projects, which includes a front-end recovery system where we're able to separate out all recyclables. This is very good for communities to understand where their model for RRR is. Those recyclables go back to the market; organics go to an AD, anaerobic digestion, solution, which the last gentleman was just speaking about. The final non-recyclable organic material, the residuals, go through our system, are gasified, and the residuals from the AD system at the close of that system's loop go back to the BOS. Then, of course, we're able to clean up all of the sewage that is present as well, the human waste.
The scalable example that I gave in regard to Old Crow, again, provides you with an understanding of how we're able to deploy into the highest, most remote regions of Canada, as well as globally. We currently have, as part of our ongoing process, a number of systems that are being deployed into Ukraine, Russia, Poland, the U.K., and New Zealand. The solutions that we provide are key in the mitigation of the primary drivers, especially here in Canada and globally, of air pollution.
The primary component that we release into the atmosphere is CO2. That CO2 is basically being unlocked from organics that are currently in the waste stream so we don't create CO2; we just release it. We're able to convert that CO2 through a scrubbing process and provide that CO2 back into greenhouses and/or algae production. We feed them CO2 and they produce oxygen. It's pretty straightforward.
We're also able to eliminate water contamination. I will give a couple of examples again.
Old Crow is a very good example. There was an open pit landfill where it was being burned or landfilled because of the permafrost. It was just running straight down the hill on a clay bank into the Porcupine River. We also eliminated a cross-vector contamination issue through medical waste being transported to drinking water and such by animals like birds.
We assist communities and industry implementing effective RRR solutions. We overlay all projects with an ISO 14001 environmental management system. We employ local community operators. The technology is very low in O and M, operations and maintenance, so we don't have to fly in Swiss engineers. The teams that operate these systems are local community members.
The energy recovery component is always key. It's actually an add-on in the sense that our primary focus is to remove those vectors as I talked about earlier. The upside to it is cleaner air, cleaner water, and of course, the energy recovery component. For instance, one particular facility that our technology is employed at is in Husavík, Iceland, where the heat is recovered and sent to a community grid for heating purposes of the local community. We're also able to produce electricity from the system, which is just boiler to turbine to generator and to the grid.
We have a large export market. Unfortunately, we are not that well implemented within Canada mainly due to growing policy regimes and some of the other issues that were described earlier. In Canada, we're a little bit further behind the curve when it comes to the communities being educated on this type of technology, which includes, as the last gentleman was mentioning, AD and biogas.
Our strongest markets to date are outside Canada. We currently are one of the last RFPs compliant to the New York City bid. As well, our technology is being featured in, and won, a bid in Santa Barbara County. We also are now in the RFP process for Maui. We are under way with projects in Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Panama, and South America.
I must add that the EDC and the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service have been absolutely fantastic in assisting us at every level in all of those overseas projects. Interestingly enough, the last lady was mentioning Panama. We have worked very well with the group in Panama, as well as of course overseas providing credit facilities to the company.
We provide a very interesting holistic model, which incorporates a socio-economic overlay. I want to highlight two very good projects here in Canada, one being the Kelly Lake Métis Settlement Society, a first nations group on the Alberta and British Columbia border. For the community I don't recall the exact employment rate but there's probably up around 75% unemployment, mainly due to the devastation of the pine beetle kill in the forest region with the community being a logging one by nature.
W e will be able to harvest that pine beetle kill for the next 25 to 30 years. We're able to facilitate those community members back into the field for work. We deliver that employment component. We then are able to translate that wood waste into a usable byproduct that is both heat for processing and electricity to the grid, which provides them with a long-term residual annuity, if you will, to the community.
We're also able to convert the generated heat into community grid heating systems and the implementation of a food greenhouse. It's a five kilometre radius for the food. We're also able to provide the greenhouse systems that use the residual heat from the equipment that provides for the silviculture for the replanting of the harvested material we take from the forest.
We also have a very similar project that is almost the same in size and scale. That is for the Tl’azt’en Nation, just outside the Prince George and Fort St. James area.
We're currently involved with three projects in the James Bay area with first nations groups there as well.
Again, it has been a great pleasure to present to you today.
My apologies for not getting that flight earlier. That wasn't the best for us.
I thank you again. I welcome any questions you may have.