Buttington developer welcomes Parliamentary debate
A debate in Parliament on incineration was initiated by Conservative MP Elliot Colburn, who is campaigning against construction of Viridor’s Beddington energy-from-waste (EfW) plant in south London.
Montgomeryshire MP Craig Williams also spoke in Parliament, sharing reservations about the planned facility near Trewern.
But Pow responded that EfW produced lower carbon emissions than landfill, and said Public Health England had concluded that “modern, well run and regulated municipal waste incinerators are not a significant risk to public health”.
She added: “Despite our high ambitions, there will always be waste that cannot be recycled or reused, potentially because it is contaminated or because there is no end market. There are choices to make about how we manage that unavoidable residual waste, and in making them we need to consider the environmental impact.
“The legacy of our reliance on landfill is responsible for about 75% of carbon emissions from the waste sector, so it is not a simple matter of switching back to landfilling non-recyclable waste."
Broad Energy recently ran a public consultation about its plans to build an ERF at Buttington, near Welshpool, which resident fear will have a negative impact on the local community, including the village primary school.
Alistair Hilditch-Brown, Chief Executive of Broad Energy, said: “It’s good to see such debates taking place in Parliament, and heartening to hear the Environment Minister recognise the place facilities such as the one we’re proposing at Buttington should be playing in waste management and energy generation.
“When it's built, Buttington Energy Recovery Facility will provide an innovative way to significantly reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill while generating low-carbon energy at the same time. It will be a significant step in the right direction towards helping Wales to become a zero-waste nation by 2050.”
Broad Energy said that the proposed ERF at Buttington will use state-of-the-art technology, provided by Hitachi Zosen Inova, which has a significant track record in building such facilities. It will be capable, the company claims, of processing non-hazardous, non-recyclable waste and transforming it into 12.8-megawatts of low-carbon electricity annually, which will be exported to the National Grid.
Broad Energy say the scheme will create 300 jobs during its construction phase and will employ 30 members of permanent staff once fully operational.
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