Cargill Meat Solutions is working toward a long-term deal to supply a proposed anaerobic digester generation plant with manure and other byproducts from its southern Ontario beef packing plant.
Municipal power utility Guelph Hydro has picked up $1 million in provincial funding for engineering design work toward a digester project on city-owned land next to Cargill’s beef plant at Guelph.
The power generated from such a project is expected to be enough to supply electricity to about 900 homes and create three new permanent jobs, the province said in a release Friday announcing the funding.
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The project is expected to divert about 17.2 million pounds of environmentally sensitive materials from landfills each year, the province said.
The partnership between the provincial ag ministry, Guelph Hydro and Cargill on the project was described as “an exciting step” in the implementation of Guelph’s Community Energy Initiative by area MPP Liz Sandals in the province’s release.
Guelph’s initiative, launched in 2007, aims to reduce the city’s overall energy consumption to the point where it uses less energy by the year 2032 than it does today, even with projected growth of 65,000 people over that 25-year time frame.
The initiative also calls for Guelph (pop. 118,000) to consume less energy per capita than comparable Canadian cities, and to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions per capita than the current global average.
Cargill’s beef slaughter plant at Guelph processes about 1,400 head of cattle daily. The Winnipeg-based Canadian wing of the U.S. agrifood firm also operates a “retail-ready” further processing plant in Guelph.
