The development of a new waste recycling and combined heat and power incinerator in Scotland has been unanimously granted permission by Midlothian Council..
The £115-million plant was given planning permission to FCC Environment and will be built on former railway marshalling yards at the Zero Waste Parc at Millerhill in Midlothian.
FCC’s parent company, FCC Medio Ambiente SA, was appointed in December 2014 as the preferred bidder for the design, building, finance and operation of the facility, which will treat all the waste collected by the City of Edinburgh and Midlothian councils that currently goes directly to landfill, as well as waste from commercial clients.
The 25-year contract will involve the thermal treatment of up to 135,000 tonnes of local authority mixed waste annually, with space for another 60,000 commercial tonnes, to provide an estimated 11 mega watts of electricity for the National Grid. It also could provide a potential 20 mega watts of heat for district heating networks, though those would have to be developed and installed.
In line with Scottish Government targets, the council hopes that the running of the new plant will mean that less than five per cent of all waste goes to landfill.
The facility will use mechanical treatment to recover recyclables before the remaining waste is processed into a solid recovered fuel that will undergo combustion.
‘A significant contribution’ to renewable energy
Councillor Lesley Hinds, Environment Convener for the City of Edinburgh Council, stated: “This decision takes us a step closer to our goal of achieving the highest possible public participation in recycling while having dedicated, competitively priced facilities that will use all the remaining waste that cannot be readily recovered as a valuable resource.
“In a combination with the food waste treatment plant which is nearing completion, these facilities will boost our recycling rate, guarantee we would meet our landfill diversion targets and make a significant contribution towards Scotland’s renewable energy targets.”
Councillor Jim Bryant, Cabinet Member for Economic Development at Midlothian Council, added: “This decision is of equal benefit to both partner councils as it represents the chance to turn a derelict, brownfield site into a valuable energy production centre.
“A district heating network could bring economic benefits to the many exciting developments that are transforming the Shawfair area and beyond, as well as attracting other innovative projects and employment opportunities.”
Plant will ‘take focus off waste hierachy’
However, Edinburgh Councillor Chas Booth from the Scottish Greens told local press that the plant would discourage people from recycling: “The way to tackle Edinburgh’s waste problem is to improve our focus on waste reduction, reuse schemes and improved recycling, not to send waste to be burnt in an incinerator.
“I’m particularly concerned that this new incinerator may undermine efforts to improve recycling and waste reduction rates in the city.”
Energy-from-waste overcapacity
Despite the growing number of energy-from-waste (EfW) facilities – such as incinerators – being built in the UK, the need for them has come under scrutiny recently. In England, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) under the previous administration withdrew funding from several recovery projects in 2014, after finding that the 29 EfW projects that already had government funding are ‘sufficient’ to meet the EU’s 2020 landfill diversion targets.
Further to this, waste consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting warned in June that the UK ‘needs to manage conflicts’ between residual waste and recycling.
Indeed, the consultancy’s bi-annual review of residual waste treatment capacity predicts a situation of potential overcapacity as early as 2018/19, and says that if all the facilities that currently have planning permission are built by 2019/20, we would see overcapacity of 2.3 million tonnes per annum, a figure that would rise to 15 million tonnes by 2030/31.
Read more about the Zero Waste Parc.
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