from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008
As many as a thousand new plants could be built to turn Scotland’s mountains of waste into heat and power for homes and businesses, according to a report for Scotland’s green watchdog.
But the report - to be published this week by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) - will provoke anxiety in communities across the country worried about pollution from waste treatment plants in their areas.
Sepa, however, insists that the proposed new facilities will be clean and strictly regulated. They include up to 741 gas-producing composting plants and 228 small-scale incinerators, all of which could supply hot water and electricity.
The plants will also create over 7,000 jobs, prevent 10 million tonnes of waste from being dumped as landfill, and cut Scotland’s climate pollution by more than five per cent, the new report says. But it doesn’t say where they all will be sited.
Sepa commissioned Ayrshire consultants, AEA Energy and Environment, to investigate the energy potential of Scotland’s waste. Its report, which has been seen by the Sunday Herald, maps out a radical shift in how might Scotland deal with its rubbish.
“Scotland is on the threshold of developing the next generation of waste management infrastructure to move away from our over-dependence on landfill,” said John Ferguson, Sepa’s strategic projects manager.
“We must continue to reduce waste and increase recycling. But where energy can be recovered from waste we have an opportunity to do this in an intelligent way that recognises the climate change, economic efficiency and energy security benefits.”
The AEA report estimates that 9.6 million tonnes of the 13.7 million tonnes of waste produced every year in Scotland could be used to produce energy. This includes wastes from farms, forests, sewage works, industry, commerce and households.
It envisages treating some of the waste in anaerobic digestion plants, which use microbes in the absence of oxygen to cause decomposition and generate gas. The gas can then be burnt to produce either heat or electricity.
Other waste is more suitable for burning in incinerators, or thermal treatment plants. The resulting heat can then be used to generate electricity and be piped as hot water to nearby buildings.
By using such combined heat and power plants, the AEA report estimates that the waste could deliver 11 million megawatt hours of energy a year. This is about 13% of the energy currently provided by natural gas.
Energy from waste would be a better solution than growing biofuels in place of food, the report suggests. To deliver the same amount of energy by planting energy crops would require double the current area of arable land.
The new plants would also reduce levels of the powerful greenhouse gas, methane, leaking out of landfill sites. The report calculates this would help cut Scotland’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 5.6%.
The plans, however, have been given a cautious reception by environmental groups. Though they welcome the prospect of anaerobic digestion plants, they are concerned that too many incinerators could undermine attempts to reduce and recycle waste.
“Anaerobic digestion can play a central role in tackling biowaste and it is encouraging that this study reveals just how big this potential is in Scotland,” said Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy at WWF Scotland.
The Scottish government has limited the amount of municipal waste that should be incinerated to 25% in 2025. “We would urge them to adopt a similar approach in dealing with Scotland's commercial waste,” argued Barlow.
“Any headlong rush to mass incineration of commercial waste would be entirely at odds with Scotland's zero waste ambition and hinder our chance of achieving high rates of recycling in this sector.”
Others fear the tiny particles of pollution that might come from incinerators. Michael Ryan, a retired civil engineer from Shrewsbury, blames emissions from a hospital incinerator for killing his 14-week old daughter in 1985 and his 19-year-old son in 1999.
He has analysed infant death rates by electoral wards in London, and concluded that those downwind of incinerators were more likely to die. He attributes this to the microscopic particles, known as PM2.5, that escape the plants’ smoke stacks.
Last week Ryan wrote to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, calling for a moratorium on new incinerators in Scotland. “Incineration promoters claim that emissions pose no risk to health, yet they fail to provide any data to back up such an opinion,” he said.
Ryan has been helping Charles Coston, a farmer who is opposing plans for a new incinerator near where he lives in Invergordon. “The new wave of incinerators coming in across the country, dressed up as waste-to-energy plants, are using technology that is proven to cause adverse health effects on nearby communities,” claimed Coston.
Sepa, however, promised that any new facilities would have to comply with stringent pollution limits. “Sepa recognises and respects the public concern about incineration,” said Rob Ebbins, the agency’s process engineering manager.
“Conditions in environmental licences for these facilities are designed to protect both the environment and human health, and Sepa is committed to enforcing those conditions.”
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