Essex County Council waste burning set to make climate change emissions WORSE

25 July 2007

Green Party Councillors say public has been misled by PFI bid that is near "state of collapse"

Green Party Councillors in Essex say there is no evidence to support the claim made by Essex County Council that burning residual waste in an "energy plant" will help in the fight against climate change. The refuse derived fuel (RDF) would be extracted from 2 proposed huge Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plants in Essex.

The Greens have obtained the council's Outline Business Case for its PFI bid to the Government, and related material, under Freedom of Information requests. They also asked Friends of the Earth about the council's use of FoE documents to "support" the county case.

Having reviewed all the material, the Greens conclude that the council's waste burning policies in their PFI bid will actually make climate change emissions worse and that the council's claims that the RDF is a "renewable" fuel could be highly misleading.

The County Council have also claimed in the most recent edition of Essex Matters (a newsletter sent to residents in Essex) that their waste policies will help combat climate change.

The "renewable energy" claim made for refuse derived fuel has unfortunately also been reused by local councils whose councillors are being asked to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to support the PFI bid.

Cllr. James Abbott, Braintree District Councillor and Co-ordinator of Essex Green Party said

" We are astounded that an organisation as large and influential as Essex County Council could be issuing such misleading and unscientific information, and that it has misrepresented the position of Friends of the Earth.

We agree that anaerobic digestion and the use of biogas can be a renewable energy source, but that is a completely distinct system to refuse derived fuel incineration, and the county council appear to be wrapping the 2 together to mislead the public.

The waste burning plant being modelled in the PFI bid for Rivenhall Airfield is proposed to burn at least 255,000 tonnes per annum of refuse derived fuel - which county councillors have told us will likely include a mixture of contaminated paper and card, plastics and disposable nappies. These are all high carbon content materials - in the case of plastics a carbon content as high as coal. Burning these materials will produce not only potentially harmful gas emissions and toxic ash, but a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Scientific studies in the US and Europe have demonstrated that burning RDF produces more CO2 emissions than other waste management methods.

Incredibly, even the council's own PFI bid states that burning plastics is carbon emitting, fossil fuel source and that of the options they looked at, a "no burning " option produced the best outcome in terms of combating climate change. It appears they have not even read their own documents before making claims in public.

The County Council have also quoted Friends of the Earth in their proposals, a quote which has been reused by District authorities to try and persuade their members to support the PFI bid. In doing so, the County Council have made the basic error of partially quoting from a research report to suit their aims. The FoE report is actually highly critical of the MBT/RDF technology that Essex is proposing in terms of the impact on climate change. In a letter to the press in Essex, copied to Cllr. Abbott, FoE has stated that

"Some Essex councillors and officers have been misinforming the public by suggesting that national Friends of the Earth support their plans for waste within Essex. However, this is misleading in the extreme." (Full text of letter below).

Cllr. Abbott continued

"The PFI bid looks now to be near a state of collapse. Even the Leader of the County Council, Lord Hanningfield, is calling for a rethink and says its unlikely the PFI bid will succeed. One of the tests the Government requires to be met is that the PFI bid enjoys broad public support. Having abandonded its no incineration pledge, and in pushing through plans for a small number of enormous waste sites against the wishes of local communities, the orginal aims of the waste strategy have been torn up and far from enjoying support, the County Council's waste policies are now attracting deepening opposition.

The public are supporting recycling and composting and want to do more - year on year the rates are going up. More good news is that the waste from households is not shooting up as the PFI bid assumes. It makes no sense to lock Essex into long term contracts to burn hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste and to hand over waste management to the private sector on just 1 or 2 massive centralised sites. There is a great opportunity to build on the success of recycling in Essex - but only if the County Council abandons its discredited PFI bid."

Full text of letter from Friends of the Earth:

Some Essex councillors and officers have been misinforming the public by suggesting that national Friends of the Earth support their plans for waste within Essex. However, this is misleading in the extreme.

Friends of the Earth expects every local council to plan for zero waste, bringing in real waste prevention measures and setting ambitious recycling and composting targets for the near future. We see no evidence of the latter from the plans of Essex County Council.

Although Friends of the Earth does see small-scale MBT plants as an interim measure to deal with residual waste, we do not support the production of RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) to burn from these plants.

We are also opposed to disposal contracts for more than ten years, as they tie local authorities into one technology and don't allow them the flexibility to adapt to increased recycling and composting, changes in the waste stream and changes in waste legislation.

Essex County Council's recent approval for a massive MBT waste disposal plant at Rivenhall for up to 510,000 tonnes of waste, producing 100,000 tonnes of RDF to burn each year, is totally contrary to Friends of the Earth's policies to save valuable resources.

We would therefore hope that in the future Essex councillors and officers quote our true position when they communicate with local communities.

Dr Anna Watson
Waste Campaigner
Reduce Resource Use Campaign