City of Toronto dufferin organics processing facility renewable natural gas facility

The expansion of the Dufferin Waste Management Facility to produce more than 3 million cubic metres (cm) of RNG per year supports the City’s closed-loop approach where not only will organics collection trucks use the RNG for fuel, but the RNG will be blended with the City’s entire 50 million cm annual consumption – further reducing costs and its carbon footprint and working towards the City’s Transform to targets.

GHD is the City owner’s engineer on the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) expansion project and is the design engineer (design-build) on the RNG Project, owned by Enbridge Gas Inc. (Enbridge). The AD expansion project will increase total organics processing capacity along with additional biogas generation. The RNG Facility will upgrade biogas for injection into Enbridge’s existing natural gas pipeline. As part of the RNG Facility design, GHD has completed balance of plant design, permitting and approvals, integration and commissioning support and project management through construction and commissioning

The site offers some unique design constraints, including the requirement for foundation supports and the use of a passive gas management system. Construction of the RNG Facility is occurring at the same time as the construction of the AD expansion. Integration of both projects is critical to overall success, as well as the coordination of construction and commissioning schedules.

In a time where the City has declared a climate emergency, this project represents an exceptionally important outcome with respect to addressing greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

It also establishes Toronto as a leader in this field, demonstrating a model for RNG production that can be utilized by many other municipalities.