Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc. (GBB), Fairfax, Va., is continuing its evaluation of development options for the City of Cleveland Recycling and Energy Generation (CREG) Center. Cleveland hired GBB to review options for the CREG Center project, which seeks to better manage the city’s municipal solid waste and potentially use waste as a source for locally produced energy.
Joining GBB for this assignment are five firms that will bring their local understanding and experience in keys areas of expertise for the project, according to the company. NTH Consultants Ltd., McGuiness Unlimited Inc. and Whelan Communications Inc., all all based in Cleveland, while GT Environmental Inc. is based in Akron, Ohio, and RMF Engineering Inc., headquartered in Baltimore.
“Cleveland has been investigating the use of municipal solid waste (MSW) for the production of energy since at least 2007,” says Ken Silliman, chief of staff for Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. “Our goals, in part, are to reduce Cleveland’s dependence on fossil fuels, develop local energy generation capacity and recover marketable byproducts such as recyclables, from MSW (municipal solid waste).
He adds, “ The GBB Project Team is in a unique position to assist us in developing a successful project due to its background, project understanding, local offices and resources and experience. We anticipate this process will result in a short listing of qualified companies and a Request for Proposals by the fall of 2013.”
In September 2011, the Division of Cleveland Public Power (CPP) began a procurement process to develop the project and issued a request for information and qualifications (RFIQ), followed by a supplemental request for information and qualification (SRIQ), which targeted a variety of waste conversion and management approaches, including thermal conversion, pyrolysis, gasification, recycling and fuel production as well as consulting and financial firms to assist in project development.
The GBB project team will review, analyze and evaluate the responses; evaluate gasification-to-energy development efforts; evaluate the co-generation opportunity; and provide a shortlist and comparison of the three best overall options, along with a life cycle analysis of each; and make overall recommendations on how to develop the CREG Center.
“Having worked on about 200 assignments involving utilization of waste for its energy content since 1980, and tracking 570-plus alternative conversion technology companies, GBB has a significant amount of waste-to-energy (WTE) and conversion technologies (CT) experience,” says John Carlton, GBB senior vice president. “This is an important assignment, and we are excited and enthusiastic for this opportunity to work closely with the city of Cleveland in developing a roadmap for a sound and successful CREG Center.”
The city has an Advance Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS) that requires CPP to diversify its power supply. The AEPS requires CPP to purchase at least 15 percent of its base load power from advanced and renewable sources by 2015, 20 percent by 2020 and 25 percent by 2025.
CPP has entered agreements for several renewable and advance energy projects including hydropower, solar and waste-to-energy anaerobic digestion technology projects and is expected to meet the 2015 milestone.
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