Viridor breaks ground on Peterborough EfW facility
Work has officially commenced on the construction of a new energy-from-waste (EfW) facility in Peterborough.
The occasion was marked by a formal ‘ground breaking’ ceremony yesterday (24 October) involving representatives of Peterborough City Council, waste management company Viridor, and construction partners, Interserve and B&W Volund.
Viridor were given planning permission to build the complex in Fengate, Peterborough, earlier this year. The facility is scheduled for completion by the end of 2015 and, with £76 million of waste services investment from the council, is expected to run for 30 years.
Once operational, it is expected to produce sufficient electricity to power 15 per cent of all Peterborough homes and process up to 85,000 tonnes of residual waste a year. Currently, Peterborough sends less than 50,000 tonnes of residual waste to landfill per year.
Councillor Gavin Elsey, Cabinet Member for Culture, Recreation and Waste Management at Peterborough Council, said: “Today marks not only the beginning of the construction phase of this new facility, but also the beginning of the end of our use of landfill in Peterborough. We very much look forward to being able to turn waste that we can’t recycle into something genuinely useful - green electricity.”
The construction phase is expected to create 25 permanent jobs, and ‘hundreds’ of construction jobs.
Criticism
The council has said it hopes the facility will help deliver ‘sustainable waste management’ and complement existing waste prevention initiatives that focus on reuse and recycling.
However, the plant has been met with some local opposition. Speaking to Resource earlier this year, Richard Olive, from Friends of the Earth Peterborough queried the value of the ‘antiquated’ technology: “Peterborough currently has about 43 per cent residual waste, and we estimate that about half of that could be recycled, if only [the council] invested in the facilities.
“We do wonder why the council are proposing to build such an antiquated type of plant. No incinerator smaller than 180,000 tonnes per year is considered economically viable. Indeed, rather than saving the council money, our consultants estimate that the Viridor plant will cost an extra £3.6 million to run, over three times the cost of landfilling, but that didn’t come up in the meeting at all.”
As well as concerns that investment in incineration deflects attention and money from the development of recycling facilities, there are also concerns of ‘overcapacity’. The production of residual waste in the city is seemingly already on the decrease as Peterborough aims for a 2020 recycling target of 65 per cent (up from the current rate of 43 per cent). In 2011/12, householders generated just 43,927 tonnes of residual waste, and would need to produce almost double this to see the plant run at full capacity.
At a broader scale, both Eunomia and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives have released reports stating that the numbers of incinerators in the UK and EU have the capacity to burn ‘more than the non-recyclable waste generated’ and could ‘threaten’ recycling rates as recyclable material would be needed to ‘feed’ the plants.
Highest Environmental Standards
In spite of opposition, Viridor started preparatory work on the EfW facility earlier this summer with the ‘demolition of existing buildings and grounds preparation’. According to the waste management company, around 95 per cent of the material generated during demolition was recycled or reused.
Paul Rowland, Regional Manager for Viridor, commented: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Peterborough City Council because it has a clear strategy and plan in place to become the UK’s environment capital and we’re committed to contribute towards that goal both throughout construction and once the facility is in operation. I am proud of the good progress we’ve made and the outstanding levels of safety and materials recovery to date.”
Read more about the background to the new facility or find out more about the work of Viridor.
