Azura’s Team Plaid enjoyed another fantastic Value of Biogas East Conference hosted by the Canadian Biogas Association. This event was held in Toronto, Ontario on April 15 through April 17, 2024. The Value of Biogas conferences are renowned as Canada’s premier gatherings for the biogas and renewable natural gas (RNG) industry. They serve as a platform for industry leaders to engage in insightful discussions and networking. We appreciate this fantastic opportunity to connect with business leaders, legal experts, project developers, technology vendors, as well as anaerobic digestion and RNG subject matter experts. Azura is pleased to not only be a sponsor, but to once again be given the opportunity to share our experience and expertise at the event.
The event started with a site tour of the City of Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant. Did you know that Ashbridges is the largest and oldest biological treatment plant in Canada, opening in 1910? Since then, generations of engineers and operators have worked to keep the plant running well and growing to meet the growing population. Azura’s David Ellis even worked on helping to optimize parts of the treatment process in the early 1990s.
Throughout the conference new biogas and RNG professionals shared several insightful presentations with the Azura team. On April 17, 2024, David Ellis shared his expertise during the Focus on Digestate in Canada session where he presented “Regulatory Risk and Solutions for Digestate Management”. Digestate provides many soil benefits over manure and mineral fertilizers. The Canadian Biogas Association recently published their Digestate Management Guideline to provide practical information for handling and applying digestate to Canadian farmland. Using his more than 30 years of experience working with anaerobic digestion systems, Dave discussed the changing digestate regulatory landscape and how it’s been affecting anaerobic digester plants. On the topic of odour and social licence, Dave presented case studies where digesters were shutdown due to odour scrutiny and shared both engineering and community strategies to prevent future cases. Dave also discussed current and potential future changes to digestate regulations, including PFOS/PFAS and microplastics limits. Overall, this is a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. It is critical that People (community), Policy (regulations), and Projects (companies/facilities) are in harmony to reach net zero/negative emissions goals.
The Value of Biogas East conference was also a special occasion for Azura’s newest member, Trisha Aldovino. This was her first biogas and RNG conference and she documented the event with a vlog – check out the video to hear about her experience.
As a proud member of the Canadian Biogas Association, the Azura team always enjoys these events and are looking forward to the Value of Biogas West conference this fall! To learn more about the Value of Biogas West event, or to register, please visit the conference website.