We can turn garbage into fuel - so why aren't we doing that

By Harold Dickert

January 18th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

No one is talking about “Garbage into oil” technology.   Not even the Canadian Liberal Party, who added major funding to the world’s largest facility now under construction just outside of Montreal – built by Enerkem (https://enerkem.com/).

From 360 000 tonnes of waste To 285 000 000 liters of clean fuels

Enerkem takes garbage as their raw material, sorting out any form of Hydrocarbons, then running this through their system to create synthetic gas (syngas).  The syngas is like a clean sheet of paper, able to be recombined into industrial bio coatings, bio paints, bioplastics, and biofuels.  It means that the garbage crisis is addressed, by removing garbage from garbage dumps and incinerators thus avoiding air pollution and water pollution.  It also means that this manufactured biofuel can be used as a lateral step to displace fossil fuel.

Building facilities such as Enerkem’s all over the world means that every major center on the planet will be the source of their own energy, and at the same time taking the risk out of the oil industry – since the amount of source material is known.

The oil industry includes a set of sub-industries in which only exploration and drilling would no longer be needed.  The rest of the industry would grow larger then the world has ever seen – yet be green.  So the question for the government is; “Why are they not supporting this Canadian technology further?”!!!  Enerkem and similar companies should have broken ground at all major cities across Canada.  Canadian technology would then be exported all over the world such that we lead by example.

Varennes Carbon Recycling (VCR) employs Enerkem’s innovative process, coupled with one of the world’s largest PEM electrolyzers, to produce biofuels and circular chemicals from non-recyclable waste and residual biomass.

What is needed alongside this technology is a “Regulated price on oil”.  Many Conservatives will get bent out of shape on this statement, but we already have the precedent of a regulated auto industry – banning the sale of I.C.E. vehicles by 2035.  However, in light of garbage-into-oil technology, electric cars are not needed, while the mining and waste of that industry is damaging.  Instead, simply filling the full tank of a conventional Jet Airliner or the full tank of even a HUMMER with BIO FUEL, instantly turns those vehicles GREEN.

The “regulation” needs to be in place to stop fossil fuel producers from undercutting the production costs of biofuel producers or driving markets to drop the price further as overall supplies of oil in general increase while green tech comes online.  The rules need to be such that bio oil is always consumed first, with fossils only used to fill any shortfall as green facilities are built.  So – drop the regulation of the “type of power source” for vehicles, but instead, regulate the oil industry.  Doing so would be a major step in the worlds move into the Cascading Carbon Economy.

The world needs to transition to the “Cascading Carbon Economy”.  Even a lot of environmentalists are clueless on this one.  It means that carbon is always cycling through various steps and never left stranded, unlike in our current system where assets are left stranded in garbage dumps.   Garbage is too valuable to be treated as garbage!

The steps of the carbon cycle are:  Energy come streaming in from the Sun, which is taken up by plants along with CO2 from the air and nutrients from the soil, these plants are then eaten by consumers, in turn, excreted to be broken down by bacteria and fungi releasing those nutrients – allowing this cycle to repeat over and over.  This is the “Closed Loop” biologists and environmentalists take about.  For a Human economy, a couple of steps are added while maintaining the closed loop.

Plants can be harvested, to be used as food or industrial products – including fuel.  Any solid waste is processed to direct the hydrocarbons to become syngas, in turn to become any number of products including biofuel.  Any CO2 produced is once again taken up by plants where the cycle repeats.  Carbon ‘cascades” from one step to the next, but never ends up in a dump.

The kicker is that the Americans had a from of Garbage into Oil even before they went into Iraq the second time.  They could have told the Arabs to shove their stinking oil  – “We don’t need it anymore”.  They could have diverted funds to build this tech all over the States instead of wasting it on a criminal war.  They would also not have needed Fracking.  The world would already be Drawing Down atmospheric carbon.  That technology was squandered but in the meanwhile, a group of professors in Montreal have come up with a better system, giving rise to Enerkem.  Canadians should be demanding the speediest transition to this tech, instead of spinning their wheels and wasting time on electric cars.

The lame goal of “net zero by 2050” is far too slow!  Surely we can build Green facilities at the same rate we built battleships during WWII.

Concurrent to the above is the rediscovery of the ancient Amerindian supersoil we now call Terra Preta.  Terra Preta has now been calculated to be the single most powerful method to sequester atmosphere carbon while restoring soil health, in turn enabling the production of healthier foods without the tremendous need for man-made fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, further unloading the fossil fuel industry.

The North American media industry is also clueless on this topic but at least there are books, and it is all over Youtube.   I have been making Terra Preta going on to a decade, with amazing results as seen in my wife’s vegetable garden, and in the production of rare native trees I have been producing.

The sad reality is that almost everyone is barking up the wrong tree, with the election of the Donald Trump and,  if as predicted – his soon to be elected Clone in Canada, we will not see any real progress for years to come.  We can refreeze the glaciers, but the delusional climate change ignoring religious right is all too prepared to create hell on Earth – let it “burn baby burn”.

Instead, we need to see real results, starting with alternate legislation – a Regulated Oil Industry.  And how about Micro Carbon Credits for those of us who are already actively sequestering atmospheric carbon?