One of the first questions our councils face is how large the waste-to-energy plant or plants should be? Before looking at the individual pros and cons of one large site, or many smaller sites, councils must know:
- How much waste is produced?
- How much is left for the plant/s after recycling and composting?
- How these figures might change over time?
Knowing the answers to these questions, leads to a decision on the overall county waste-to-energy capacity that is needed. What continues is the exciting question of how large any one plant should be, and related to this is the question of how many plants need to be built.
Large
The advantages are:
- Councils only have to get planning permission for one big site.
- Large systems typically enjoy lower operating and maintenance costs.
- Large systems are typically more efficient in producing electricity.
The disadvantages are:
- Large plants often attract a lot of opposition from local residents.
- Greatly increase traffic for those living near the incinerator.
- Often seen as unsightly, since large plants may not blend in well with the local environment
- Concentration of local impact, particularly in terms of lorry deliveries or emissions and visual.
- Requires great amounts of money to be raised. This often leads to only major companies owning the schemes.
Medium or Local
The advantages are:
- Less delivery traffic concentrated on one site.
- A greater number of smaller plants, say three or four across a county area means that transporting the waste to them is far less than to one big one.
- The plants are smaller, so less unsightly.
- It is easier to use the heat generated by smaller plant in local homes/schools/factories to provide cheaper heating to stop the use of diminishing fossil fuels, such as gas, coal and oil. This helps climate change.
- It’s a more flexible strategy, in that if one plant shuts down, the others will still work.
- The plants can be developed, say one every three years. This gives recycling and waste minimisation measures chance to work.
- Local plants, sized to the need of the town or district can increase the community’s awareness of waste issues and perhaps even allow public or community ownership –For example, people could purchase shares and provide local residents a real say in how the plant operates.
The disadvantages are:
- Several plants may be more expensive to build and run.
- Can result in a greater use of land due to multiple sites.
- Planning permission must be sought for several sites – even if this is spread over 10 years or so.
Click here to find out how David’s project identified different size and number WtE options.
After the size and number of plants have been decided, then comes the question of where should we build them……………………….?
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