Sustainability Victoria chief executive Stan Krpan has praised the City of Ballarat’s aim of building a waste-to-energy facility in the Ballarat West Employment Zone.
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Visiting the region as part of a tour by the Sustainability Victoria board, Mr Krpan said the facility will be a “centrepiece” of the site that is expected to facilitate thousands of jobs in coming years.
“We know that sustainability is going to be a real feature of the new Victorian economy,” he said.
“That’s where all the new jobs are when you look globally. Thinks like energy efficiency, bio energy, solar, wind. These are the jobs of the future and the City of Ballarat wants to be a part of that future.
“Bio energy can be complex in the sense that there aren’t a lot of large scale plans in Victoria yet, but internationally it is working. We see it with organic waste in particular, which can be used for energy, that’s there is a lot of interest.”
City of Ballarat has this year implemented a green waste service for around 40,000 residents which is expected to divert 8,000 tonnes from landfill annually.
The long-term goal is to use the waste as fuel for the bio energy plant, while local manufacturing plants such as Mars could also contribute waste for the production of energy.
Ballarat’s green waste is currently trucked to Mt Wallace where it is composted.
City of Ballarat mayor Des Hudson said there is a lofty goal of constructing a bio energy plant in within five years.
“I think we should set ourselves a challenge of potentially plant being up and running within five years,” Cr Hudson said.
“I know that may sound ambitious, but I think if we’re going to be serious about these types of benefits over the long term, we need to set ourselves those very ambitious targets and work towards that.
“Let’s do the science part, get all the technicalities undertaken, then look at the feasibility to go out to market.”
Victorian households generate around 1.3 million tonnes of organic waste a year.
More than half of it is estimated to end up in landfill and can create greenhouse gas emissions and odor as it breaks down.
For every tonne of organic waste diverted from landfill, one point four tonnes of CO2 emissions are not generated.
By the end of this year a quarter of rural and regional Victorians will have access to a kerbside organic collection service.
The Sustainability Victoria board also visited Acciona Energy’s Waubra Wind Farm and the Powercor storage battery at Buninyong.