Environment minister, Jane Kennedy, has defended waste-to-energy as a worthwhile way of generating renewable power, displacing fossil fuel consumption and meeting the UK’s landfill-reduction targets.
She was responding during a Westminster Hall debate which saw Gloucester MP, Parmjit Dhanda, criticising Gloucestershire County Council’s decision to buy a plot of land at Quedgeley for £7.4m for a 175,000t a year PFI plant. He called it a ‘10-storey beast’ and estimated that, by 2020, the county would only generate 100,000t of residual waste a year, necessitating trucking in large quantities of waste.
Dhanda accused the council’s Conservative administration of lying about its attitude to incineration before it was elected, and urged an increase in the county’s 60% recycling target. He was supported by Stroud MP, David Drew, who claimed that the days of incineration had largely gone.
The growing number of schemes around the country suggests the opposite, however, and Ms Kennedy said while the Government had no preference for particular choice of energy-from-waste technology, apart from anaerobic digestion for food waste, it was essential to meet Landfill Directive targets.
‘Generating renewable energy from residual waste has benefits, through avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from landfill, and with energy from the biodegradable fraction of waste displacing fossil fuel-based power generation,’ she said. ‘Our aim is to maximise generation.’
Waste-to-energy suffered a recent setback when the High Court ordered Surrey County Council’s planning consent for an incinerator at Capel to be quashed and ordered the site to be deleted from its waste plan. But elsewhere, the technology is moving forward and its promoter Sita UK is about to commission a third line at its Haverton Hill plant on Teesside, raising capacity to 390,000t a year and generating 30MW, which will take 110,000t a year of Northumberland County Council’s residual waste. The company is adamant that waste-to-energy does not hit recycling.
‘Recycling levels are high in those European countries where waste-to-energy is high,’ said a spokesman. ‘Waste-to-energy is there for the residual waste when other targets are met.’
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