Team Gemini, an Orlando, Fla.-based developer and integrator of renewable energy projects, has amassed a team of renewable energy and recovery technology providers with the goal of siting clusters of these technologies together.
The company seeks to develop multi-tenant industrial parks where tenants can share the local waste stream to produce a variety of synergistic, renewable resources, including energy, explains Doug Haughn, founding partner and president of the company.
Q: What new projects have you been focusing on this year?
A: We are going to start construction on $1.2 billion in projects, split among four sites. In December 2013 we broke ground on the Center of Resource Recovery and Recycling (COR3) in Grove City, Ohio, part of the Gemini Synergy Center (GSC). The GSC is a 365-acre, self-sustaining multitenant industrial park being built in cooperation with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO). COR3 is a hybrid mixed materials recycling and recovery facility. The park also will house biorefineries, anaerobic digesters, water recycling and rainwater harvesting, compressed natural gas (CNG) from methane gas and research and development. The facility has access to SWACO’s entire waste stream and rights to the Franklin County (Ohio) Landfill for the next 99 years. Additional centers are planned in Germany and in Pembroke, N.C. The company also plans to work on an ethanol biorefinery in Alberta, Canada.
Q: What makes you different from your competitors?
A: Our goal isn’t necessarily to produce power. In our experience, doing a straight waste-to-energy approach destroys some of the profitability. We’re taking all the waste and refining it into the most profitable products, which includes energy. However there are things in the waste stream that are worth more than energy: for example cellulosic biomass, metals and some plastics. In fact, less than 2 percent of our financial model comes from the sale of electricity.
We also have a commitment to the Triple Bottom Line philosophy of People, Planet and Profit. We are actively working to equally benefit the community we’re in, do something good for the planet and then make a profit.
Q: Where do you see your company five years from now?
A: We’re shooting to be the best in the business, with programs in place to give back to the local communities.