SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Ecology North is looking to turn the city's waste vegetable oil from restaurants into a cost-effective way to heat businesses.

The idea is to set up one building in town with a boiler that can burn the excess oil that would normally go to the city's landfill.

"Because there is a large cost associated with setting up the boiler, we are envisioning one place that could handle all the oil for customers in the building," said Dwayne Wohlgemuth, who is working on the project on a contract basis for Ecology North.

"The oil has 90 per cent of the heat content of more traditional heating oil, and all that would normally just go to the landfill at a rate of $25 a tonne. Compare that to other jurisdictions where it costs around $50 to store it in the landfill, so the city would actually save money by not subsidizing the cost of storing this excess material," said Wohlgemuth.

"The original motivation for this project was two-fold: to start a new business as well as get this excess material out of the landfill," said Wohlgemuth.

Ecology North has already received $40,000 in funding to look at the feasibility of using vegetable oil as a heating source. The group is looking for an additional $60,000 to $70,000 in funding that would carry them through the development and engineering phase of the project.

"If everything goes according to plan, we are envisioning having a building in town using the boiler by the summer of 2012," said Wohlgemuth, though he admits things are in the very early stages and he wouldn't name which buildings are being looked at.

"We have been talking with the city to look at buildings and see if any are appropriate," said Wohlgemuth.

He said if they find a place to build the boiler, the expected savings for whoever signs on would be around 20 per cent of what they are paying now.

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