The North Yorkshire-based Dalton Incinerator Steering Committee (DISC) continues to lobby the Coalition Government about the wisdom of alternatives to waste incineration.

Back in May 2010, DISC worked in conjunction with North Yorkshire County Councillor John Savage to send a latter to George Osborne (see full letter reproduced below). This attracted regional media coverage – see, for example, the article in the Yorkshire Post entitled Cameron lobbied to halt finance for national drive to burn waste.

More recently DISC submitted a substantial examination of their support for zero waste and their opposition to the incineration of waste on economic, environmental and health grounds, in response to the Review announced by Caroline Spelman in her “Waste – new thinking for a new economy” speech to Futuresource on 15th June 2010.

Download DISC’s 32-page consultation submission [PDF].

Now DISC has set up an online petition at: http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/dont-incinerate-north-yorkshire.html

The petition calls on the councillors of North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council:

1. To listen to the community;
2. To vote against the proposed waste management plant at Allerton Park;
3. To urgently review their waste management strategy;
4. Specifically to review in full a wider set of more innovative and sustainable solutions for the future that match current national policy, reflect up to date technology and the state of the economy by going beyond large-scale incineration, reflecting the views of the public of North Yorkshire today through full, open and responsive dialogue with the public, and safeguard the heritage of those who live and work in the county now and in the future.

Sign the petition now!

Further information about the proposed Allerton Quarry incinerator can be seen at the Crown Hotel, Borobridge from 11am-7pm on July 15th Crown Hotel, in Harrogate on Saturday 17th July from 10am-4pm and on Monday 19th July at Knaresborough House, from 10am-6pm.

Letter to George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer

18th May 2010
Immediate potential savings of £2bn – £3bn.
Financially disastrous waste PFIs being awarded nationally
North Yorkshire imminent – please halt it now.

Congratulations upon your recent appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I am writing in my capacity as Chairman of North Yorkshire County Council to highlight the urgent need to save money immediately and to implement the Conservative waste strategy of anaerobic digestion and high recycling levels. This is a manifesto and coalition agreement detailed in item 11. Environment of the ConLib agreement.

This issue is particularly urgent as genuine and immediate cost savings are possible and the figures nationally in this respect are significant – between £2 and £3bn has been budgeted in PFI credits to support incineration projects up and down the country. The PFIs are not fixed cost contracts, will considerably, bind local governments if entered into precipitately and are driving forward change that is far from best practice. In terms of financial risk they may actually be the tip of the iceberg as is evidenced by the recent massive overspend on the Manchester waste PFI which jumped from £100m budget to £124.5m during implementation.

The incineration industry also receives an irregular subsidy in the form of a 90% tax discount on disposal of the ash, some of which is toxic but NOT fully regulated as such.

This was enshrined in Statutory Instrument 1996 No 1528 which in essence has served its time as a policy and generated sufficient investment in the industry to define whether incineration technology has the legs to deliver a sustainable contribution to the energy strategy for the UK. Overwhelming evidence suggests it has not and it should be withdrawn.

Our own county council has wrestled with central directives to manage landfill diversion but in the absence of clear guidelines over CO2 emissions, food waste and waste collection methods, large quantities of money and valuable time has been spent to no avail. My county of North Yorkshire now faces the real prospect of implementing a large scale recycling programme only to then scale it back in 2013-2014 as an incinerator comes on line.

There is a large body of evidence to show that incineration is a poor strategy:

• Investment levels are far higher than recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion options (Peter Jones Waste Consultant – London Mayoral Independent Appointee)
• Energy recover levels in comparison levels are very poor (ICF recycling) not least because transmission losses and energy storage is a massive inherent technical problem
• Anaerobic Digestion holds the advantage that energy is stored in the form of fuel and can be localised to minimise transmission losses.
• Costs are very high and the contracts last over 25 years – leaving any local authority exposed to large market shifts in costs and fuel mix. They will be unable to take advantage of new technology when it comes onstream.
• CO2 levels will rise in comparison to landfill (Peter Jones OBE)
• Incineration creates very few jobs and the net effect is to take revenue out of the local economy. Most of the engineering is foreign and the operators are multinationals.
• Materials banned from disposal into landfill are not similarly segregated from incineration but as their value rises through scarcity and the effect of the Landfill Tax ratchet, these high calorie sources are likely to become more scarce.
• Central electricity generators are installing significant capacity to co-fuel burn e.g. Ferrybridge, North Yorkshire which will radically alter gate prices downwards by about 50% and add 1 million tonnes demand to the market for waste derived fuel drawn from an 8o mile radius from Newcastle to Nottingham, Hull to Manchester.

Boris Johnson has recently appointed Peter Jones as London’s external consultant and we have brought Peter and Dr Paul Connett (Cambridge and St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he specialized in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology over to explain the economic situation to the County Councillors. Over 140 council officials from a cross section of the executive to parish council chairmen attended the conference.

Well organised programmes in leading authorities have achieved very high landfill diversion rates e.g. West Midlands is now at its 2020 landfill target already!

Our council, among many others, have not responded positively to the Landfill Tax and now see incinerators as a quick fix to meet their targets late. However as Peter Jones shows in the attached slide the incineration route is inherently flawed – with CO2 levels at their lowest in anaerobic digestion and recycling and rising again to new heights with incineration.

The incineration route is fundamentally underpinned by two financial packages.

Firstly PFI credits in our own area for incineration plans are allocated at £65m – across the country there are dozens of other councils planning the same route based on the grants and the tax subsidy for ash disposal. It is calculated that between £2 and £3.2 billion nationally is involved just for the incineration plants.

In addition to this grant, the operators will receive a massive £41.50 discount on Landfill Tax (reduce to £2.50 per tonne) on disposal of potentially toxic incinerator bottom ash (IBA) – the material that drops out of the furnace.

The outgoing Labour administration reneged on a full review of this discount only last month. Withdrawal of the subsidy was stopped by laggard authorities arguing that they had committed upwards of £1m each on coming to the decision to use the incineration route and were well advanced in their planning. Were the subsidy to be withdrawn this would probably generate another £60m in tax revenue in this area and at least make it clear to ratepayers nationally who effectively pay the full rate that this Conservative government is keen to avoid subsidising polluters.

Generally withdrawal of PFI credits for incinerators will prove a good political move – the programme would generate jobs locally in all authority areas in wage groups which are likely to spend locally and keep the wealth circulating. There are up to 20 times more jobs in recycling versus incineration and in our own area up to 1000 new jobs could be created. Local brown field sites will be required for processing. Reusing materials also reduces a reliance on exports which will benefit the pound. And the routes to recycling and anaerobic digestion are far more solid and less likely to generate a project overspend. This will move us far closer to CO2 targets quicker and more sustainably.

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours
County Councillor John Savage – Ainsty Ward