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Often, innovation and partnership go hand in hand. North America’s first renewable-waste combined heat and power (CHP) system, which opened last September, united the expertise and resources of three partners: GE, Nexterra and the University of British Columbia (UBC).

“Our core technology is to take wood fuel and convert it to synthetic gas, which is burned to produce heat,” says Mike Scott, president and CEO of Nexterra, a provider of energy from renewable waste systems. “GE came to us five years ago and said they were interested in finding a company that could produce a syngas that burned cleanly enough to fuel their Jenbacher high-efficiency internal combustion engines.”

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Combining Nexterra’s proprietary gasification and syngas conditioning process with the Jenbacher would create a system capable of producing both heat and electricity.

“The opportunity was a tremendous showcase for collaboration between a small company and a globally leading company like GE,” says Scott. “Involving your company in a business relationship requires you to take a calculated risk, but once we put protections in place for both our intellectual properties, we felt confident moving forward.”