Creating Energy from Waste in Aotearoa
Matthew Jackson (Kopakopa) and Harmaan Madon (Ngā Manu Titi Rere Ao) connected through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) and have since joined forces to create circular bioenergy startup, Alimentary. Alimentary presents a unique opportunity for Aotearoa NZ to become a global leader in organic waste treatment with its circular system that converts Wastewater Sludge and Industrial Organic Waste into clean energy to reduce gross emissions.
“New Zealand’s only current method of emissions management is offsetting with pine tree plantations,” says Alimentary Co-Founder and EHF Fellow (Kopakopa), Matthew Jackson. “But this is simply not enough to meet New Zealand’s climate goals and international commitments. We need to be looking at gross emissions reductions, emissions prevention and removal. That’s exactly what Alimentary is offering.”
Matthew says that his entrepreneurial journey has long centred on commercialising disruptive technologies; when EHF Fellow Harmaan Madon (Ngā Manu Titi Rere Ao) moved to New Zealand from India in 2019 looking for a better market for his low-cost, energy-positive waste treatment system, the two quickly found common ground and started collaborating. “I am not a career entrepreneur,” Harmaan says. “My background is in engineering, sustainable fuels and R&D, primarily in the automobile industry. But my passion for that work had plateaued. So I decided to find a way to create positive impact instead.”
Harmaan founded the first iteration of Alimentary, Madon Applied Sciences, in India in 2017, but found it difficult to gain traction there. “After a lot of R&D to fine-tune the technology, I won, and subsequently lost, a bid for 20 Integrated Waste Treatment Plants. I had a proven, patented system that curbs emissions, creates a valuable resource out of wastewater, and prevents leaching of wastewater sludge into the drinking water supply, but I still couldn’t sell it. I realised then that the socio-political structures in India didn’t yet support this kind of technology, so I did a global scan and found that New Zealand was the first country to have a Centre for Integrated Bio Waste Research. I joined the Fellowship, brought the technology to New Zealand and found a new lease of life. I had never been here before and I didn’t know anyone other than the EHF selection committee, but Matthew kindly offered to help me to navigate the New Zealand ecosystem. We connected just before lockdown and I did, indeed, pepper him with a lot of questions about how I might start again here in New Zealand.”
“Harmaan is the most ambitious fellow I had met asking for help in the local ecosystem,” Matthew says. “I quickly realised that we had similar value systems. At that time, I was working on Internet of Things and micro mobility, and trying to figure out how to make my home a zero-waste border. I felt an intrinsic connection to the work that he was doing. We built a close relationship and formally founded Alimentary Systems in 2021, transferring Harmaan’s existing intellectual property from India to New Zealand.”
Alimentary’s patented technology employs a circular system to process any organic waste including wastewater sludge (which currently goes primarily to landfill), green waste, food waste, Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) sludge, meat offal, grape marc, and crop residue. A combination of biomimicry and anaerobic co-digestion quickly breaks these inputs down, creating a biogas output sufficient enough to power every part of the process and the treatment facility and, in larger plants, to export power back into the grid. The Co-Founders are now working on a pilot for the first Bioresource Recovery Plant in Nelson that will do exactly this.
“The Nelson Bioresource Recovery Plant (BRRP) will boost renewable energy by 400% by mixing food waste with biosolids. It will also cut waste disposal costs by 50-80% and reduce national emissions by 5%, a savings of $850m per year,” Matthew says. “The project is shovel-ready now.”
“BRRP is set to transform waste management in Aotearoa,” Harmaan adds. “Wastewater treatment is energy hungry. New Zealand’s emissions liability is approaching $17b per year.” “We’ve taken a Planetary Accounting approach to everything we do by looking beyond carbon emissions to the full range of planetary boundaries. By processing wastewater treatment plant sludge and food waste together, we can solve both our food waste problem and our water reform funding problem,” Matthew says.
One of the significant challenges around waste processing is the under-reported issue of territorial emissions, the Co-Founders say. “We currently move food and sludge across territorial boundaries,” Matthew says, “which greatly increases the emissions associated with waste processing and can muddy emissions reporting.” “With the Alimentary model, we process organic waste in a region, consolidate all organics including sludge, recover energy and nutrients, and prevent the transportation of waste from one region to another,” Harmaan adds.
The proven Alimentary technology is also cheaper and more efficient than all of the existing alternatives, Matthew says. “We can process 1 tonne of sludge for $82, half the price of the current average and about a quarter of the price of the competing technologies. With some additional support to supplement our existing funding , we’ll be able to scale our patented technology by 10x.”
The other major piece of the puzzle is legislative, Harmaan says. He has been meeting regularly with the Climate Commission to validate Alimentary’s circular financial model and fine-tune how the Nelson pilot will accelerate Aotearoa’s journey to become a carbon-zero nation. “One of the advantages of bringing this technology to New Zealand is the ability to connect with policy and decision-makers here. We’re now interfacing with government across a range of areas and presenting the technology to Ministers.” “The Climate Minister, James Shaw, recently announced a review of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), which is in line with Alimentary’s overall goal of gross emission reductions,” Matthew adds. “This shift opens the door for technologies like ours to become eligible to be included in the emissions reduction plan, which would be a huge step in the right direction for New Zealand and Alimentary.”
Both Matthew and Harmaan acknowledge the significant role that EHF has played in their journey thus far. “[Fellow] Rachel Sanson played a vital role in securing the land in Nelson for the BRRP pilot,” Matthew says. “We’ve also welcomed deep support from [Fellow] Hana Mahi and [EHF Connector] Huia Lambie in the creation of our mātauranga Māori framework. The wider EHF network also made it possible for Harmaan to be based at the Ministry of Awesome in Christchurch, which is where we participated in and subsequently won the Impact and People’s Choice Awards at the recent Orion Energy Accelerator.”
The big-picture vision, they say, is to licence the knowledge, enabling Bioresource Recovery Plants to start operating globally. “Our hope is to create commercial frameworks that allow communities worldwide to adopt and adapt these systems to meet their specific needs,” Harmaan says. “And we’re excited about how EHF can help amplify the impact we’re able to create,” Matthew adds. “If we can achieve what we’re expecting, we’ll be able to bring a pretty significant return back to New Zealand.”
Alimentary is now seeking additional co-funding from like-minded investors who are passionate about impact, climate, energy, water and agriculture, as well as Māori equity stakeholders. “We’ve already got the knowledge, the technology, the capacity and the team,” Matthew says. “We have everything we need now. We just need the additional resource to scale.”
To learn more and connect with Matthew and Harmaan, visit https://www.alimentary.systems/
To watch a recording of Matthew and Harmaan (along with Dr Paul Bennet) discuss how bioenergy will play a key role in reducing the world's reliance on extracted fuel sources in the race to emissions neutrality, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_uY7W1d1U8
Story by EHF Fellow Bex De Prospo (Piripiri) and Director of Authentic Storytelling