San Jose is a step closer to its green vision

Last summer, we brought you the details of San Jose's "Green Vision" plan, where the city aspires to become 100 percent energy independent and waste-free by 2023. 

One of the key components of that plan is a biogas plant that would be responsible for a large chunk of the city's electricity and stop waste from going into landfills.  Now, a year later, the San Jose City Council gave an initial go-ahead for the plant and the city is one step closer to making it a reality.

The biogas facility would be the country's first organics-to-energy biogas plant, a technology already being used in Germany and Italy.  The plant would create energy through breaking down food waste and also organic solid waste through dry anaerobic fermentation, creating methane.  The process is different because it's done without oxygen and breaks down solid waste that normally ends up in landfills, not just wet waste.  The Zanker Road Biogas facility would process 150,000 tons of the organic waste, producing electricity and compost that will be used as fertilizer.

The resulting electricity will power the water pollution plant and be sold to the grid.  The facility will be located between two solid-waste recovery and recycling plants, removing any chance of neighborhood complaints.

via USA Today