GIB invests in WLWA EfW plant
The Green Investment Bank (GIB) has announced that it will invest £20 million in West London Waste Authority’s (WLWA) new £244 million energy-from-waste (EfW) facility.
The 34-megawatt Severnside Energy Recovery Centre (SERC) facility forms part of the recently-signed residual waste contract between WLWA and a consortium led by SITA UK, Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) and the Itochu Corporation.
Based in Gloucestershire, the facility has already received planning permission, and once up and running, is expected to manage up to 300,000 tonnes of residual municipal waste collected from 1.6 million people living in the London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond upon Thames.
GIB has said it will invest £20 million of the senior debt alongside a lending club of Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mizuho Bank.
Equity will be provided by the SITA consortium.
Speaking of the investment, Shaun Kingsbury, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Green Investment Bank, said: “This is a model investment for us. Our mandate is to help mobilise significant sums of private money to invest in important UK infrastructure projects that are both green and profitable. With this project, every £1 of GIB investment brings £11 of other capital, much of it from international investors.
“The project will bring about an immediate environmental benefit; instead of residual waste from 1.6 million people being sent to landfill each year, it will be used to create enough energy to power the equivalent of 50,000 households.”
Suez Environnement (parent company of SITA UK) has said it expects preliminary construction work to begin at Severnside next month with the facility reaching completion in 2016.
Green Investment Bank background
Thought to be the ‘first bank of its kind in the world’, the GIB was launched in November 2012 to support environmentally friendly projects that cannot obtain sufficient funding from the markets.
It is a ‘for profit’ bank, whose mission is to ‘accelerate the UK's transition to a greener economy’, further the UK's 2020 target in reducing carbon emissions, and ‘create an enduring institution, operating independently of Government’.
As outlined by the European Commission, GIB can make investments on ‘commercial terms’ in the following sectors:
- Offshore wind;
- Waste (treatment and recycling and energy from waste);
- Non domestic energy efficiency;
- Biofuels for transport;
- Biomass power;
- Carbon capture and storage;
- Marine energy; and
- Renewable heat
GIB has previously invested £8 million in a new anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Teesside and £5 million to retrofit Kingspan’s UK industrial facilities in North Wales.
Chris Holmes was announced as the new Managing Director of Waste and Bio-Energy for the UK Green Investment Bank plc in October.
Read more about the Green Investment Bank or WLWA’s waste contract
