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Information about the Waste PFI plan for all councillors in North Yorkshire
(parish, district, county and York City)

We have prepared and written a report based on submissions made to the PFI working group (following meetings with NYCC Officers, we have recently updated the report).

Download the report here:

If you prefer, download a brief summary of the key issues from our report:

Following our meetings with NYCC Officers we also sent this letter to the PFI working group:

If you have any questions about the report please contact us.

 

McG Parish Council

pcclerk@marton-cum-grafton.org

Illuminating debate in Westminster 26.10.10

(Download the full debate)

Here are some significant extracts:

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con):

"Let me touch on a further problem relating to the Government's climate change and energy policy. Even if one recognises that waste management needs to be properly framed within a national strategy, there is a good argument to say that the planned incinerator in my constituency would fall foul of important efficiency criteria in the EU waste framework directive of 2008. I am not always fond of the EU, but the directive highlights the importance of efficiency in incineration for the purposes of creating energy and heat. It requires that incinerators be labelled as only "recovering" energy from waste if they have a burn and energy creation efficiency of some 65%. If they do not reach that criterion, they are to be considered a disposal facility. In other words, they would be on a par with landfills.
I am reliably informed that the normal efficiency of incinerators in the UK is about 25%, and that the efficiency of the one in Middlewich, according to the company that wants to build it, would be, at best, 26%"

"Let us not delude ourselves: in the waste hierarchy, a low efficiency rating is on a par with landfill. That is not sustainable and should not be considered environmentally friendly. The Sustainable Development Commission has recommended that only high-efficiency energy from waste plants-namely energy from plants that produce a 65% return on burning waste-should receive Government support, and I agree with it."

[McG comment: The statement above refers to the fact that most UK incinerators do not, or cannot, make use of the waste heat - the energy in the waste heat is 3 times the amount of energy that is converted to electricity - the Allerton Park facility will not make use of the waste heat because it is miles away from any urban or industrial area. In Scandinavia, by comparision, nearly all the waste heat is used in district heating schemes].

Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con):

"The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently announced that as part of the comprehensive spending review, it reviewed the amount of private finance initiative grant that the Government need to put into local-government-funded waste-treatment infrastructure. It concluded that some projects will not go ahead. However, thousands of concerned North Yorkshire residents will be disappointed that the North Yorkshire and city of York waste PFI project at Allerton Park is one of the 11 projects that will retain its provisional allocation of PFI credits. Will the Minister be kind enough to let me know why the Allerton Park project is one of those schemes to escape the CSR axe and on what grounds the decisions on what scheme to keep or scrap were made? Furthermore, will the Minister tell me and my concerned constituents, thousands of whom have signed a petition against the proposal, whether he believes that North Yorkshire county council is using public money wisely by signing up the public purse to a 25 to 30-year PFI project, with an initial cost to the taxpayer of £65million, especially during such straitened times?"

Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con):

"Let me add my concerns to the debate about Allerton Park. The financial case for the proposal at Allerton Park is deeply flawed. The proposed incinerator will require 300,000 tonnes of waste a year, yet the household waste generated across North Yorkshire will not reach that level. That means that the incinerator will have to take commercial waste; there is nothing wrong with that, but it means that the risk will be with the local taxpayer, and the gain will be with the incinerator operators."