Enesys successful in obtaining grant from Sustainability Victoria to develop a business plan for innovative Waste to Energy to Growing Demonstration Project at Melbourne Innovation Centre

MEDIA RELEASE

10.03.2020

For Immediate Release

Creating Visionary Circular Economies: from Waste to Energy to Growing.

Imagine being able to divert all our food waste away from landfill to create clean renewable energy but to also help us grow food sustainably?

Victorian company Enesys has been awarded a grant administered by Sustainability Victoria's Waste to Energy Infrastructure Fund to develop a business case for a fully sustainable commercial precinct. 

The project will demonstrate how commercial precincts and communities can create their own energy while growing local fresh, nutritious food, and recycling their waste.

Australia has a waste problem. We spend more than $10.1 billion on food that ends up in our bins or as landfill. What if we could divert this waste and use it to create clean energy?  

Extracting energy from organic waste via a process called Anaerobic Digestion is not a new technology. However, unlike burning waste with incineration, Anaerobic Digestion is a natural process where bacteria break down organic matter and produce a gas that is 50–75% methane. This clean gas creates not only clean energy but heat, water, nutrients, and carbon dioxide. 

Waste to Energy to Growing

Enesys founder and engineer, John Norwood, has recognised that all the by-products of energy creation from waste are precisely what a plant needs to thrive: heat, water, nutrients and carbon dioxide. John developed smart packaged systems and technologies that can distribute these by-products into a controlled growing environment, effectively using waste to create energy to facilitate plant growth.

"Growing indoors is becoming increasingly important as populations grow and cities need to feed themselves. But it’s energy-intensive," John says. "So, directing clean energy into a greenhouse or vertical farm not only solves an energy problem but Enesys systems can also provide heat, chilling, water, nutrients and potentially carbon dioxide to help plants thrive." 

Integration of Three Industries 

Taking it one step further, John also realised that the Waste, Energy Generation and Growing industries have enormous natural resource synergies and could benefit from sharing resources

When placed together within one precinct, they can offer the optimum potential to share resource connectivity and utilise otherwise wasted products, increase profit, and dramatically reverse the ecological damage that is caused by the same industries acting in isolation.

"We can link multiple industries on the one site. We can create enough energy, water, and nutrients for numerous allied tenants," John explained. "For example, we can direct heat and carbon dioxide generated from waste to a brewer; we could provide waste chilling to a food processor who requires refrigeration, we can offer excess nutrient-rich water to on-site market gardeners. Similarly, we can use the organic waste by-products of the businesses on-site for our energy requirements; therefore, closing resource loops and developing innovative examples of future sustainable precincts and potential for communities." 

Technology

GrowLink ™, developed by Enesys, is a suite of modular process control systems designed to physically link proprietary packaged equipment, large industrial systems, and independent businesses together. This enables a company to continue to operate its core business and activities more profitably and partner in a broader circular economy.

Precinct Partners

The Business Case will detail the technical requirements and economic benefits of GrowLink and the precinct partners and demonstrate how specific businesses can adopt circular economies. Enesys is thrilled to announce that it will partner with the Melbourne Innovation Centre in Alphington, who will support Enesys in not only drafting the Business Plan but with the demonstration project itself. 

Melbourne Innovation Centre (MIC) will support Enesys to develop a sustainable business model for this exciting project and look at various options to integrate the technology across MIC’s four business hub locations in Melbourne. 

MIC CEO David Williamson says, “this is a highly innovative technology and not your typical waste to energy solution. We look forward to working with Enesys and partners to demonstrate the various applications of this technology in a business hub and food ecosystem context.”

Enesys hopes that the business case will attract investment, industry, collaboration and precinct partners to accelerate the construction of the project. 

www.enesys.com.au

info@enesys.com.au

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CONTACT INFORMATION

Please contact Dijana Dawe, BD and Marketing Manager Enesys for more information or to arrange an interview with founder and innovator, John Norwood.

Phone- Dijana 0409 653 911                                            Email- Dijana@enesys.com.au

LinkedIn Profiles-

 Dijana Dawe https://www.linkedin.com/in/dijana-dawe-7329a366/

John Norwood- https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-norwood-7526038/

Website- www.enesys.com.au

COMPANY INFO:

Enesys is an award-winning company that develops technical and economic sustainable energy and resources solutions involving the physical and commercial linking of waste, energy, growing, and manufacturing industries to close resource loops and create circular economies. Enesys expertise includes technical and commercial knowledge of renewable energy, sustainable precincts, and community infrastructure, high-density growing systems, PAR lighting design, and manufacture and bespoke process control design and construction.

Enesys is the Ecologically Sustainable Technology and Research & Development entity owned by Norwood Technologies Pty Ltd which also operates The Project Office a multi-disciplined electrical and mechanical engineering design and construction consultancy that was established in Melbourne in 1988.

Enesys has a passion for Ecologically Sustainable Systems and project development that go far beyond traditional “Demand Management” and “Energy Monitoring” concepts. We believe that these concepts are necessary consequences of decades of insular thinking and inflexible energy, production, and manufacturing systems.

We believe that in this “Plug & Play” era, low maintenance packaged energy and resource transformational systems are the key to economically installing ecologically sustainable systems that are user-friendly, in increasingly more diverse and smaller places.

ATTACHMENTS:

• Video-Waste to Energy to Growing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oDRH9bxs4. NB tech referred to as Enhanced Greenhousing. Now rebranded as Growlink by Enesys- Waste to Energy to Growing.

• Team images

Video- Enesys Sustainability Philosophy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZrNrvpk9U

https://www.enesys.com.au/about/