Plans for a £106.3 million Energy-from-Waste project on Jersey have been given the go-ahead, as the island develops a residual waste processing solution to replace its ageing Bellozanne incinerators.

The plant, which will have the capacity to process up to 105,000 tonnes of residual waste a year, will be built as a joint venture by French company CNIM (Constructions Industrielles De La Mediterranee) and Jersey-registered civil engineers Batignolles Camerons Limited.

An artist's impression of the proposed La Colette Energy-from-Waste facility

Located at La Colette, near St Helier, the facility aims to accept all Jersey's inert non-residual waste, after recycling, and as a result will replace the three-stream incinerator plant at Bellozanne which has processed the island's waste since the late 70s.

Sharing a chimney, cooling water system and ancillary services with the adjacent Jersey Electricity Company power station, it will be able to produce 10 megawatts of power, equivalent to 7% of the island's electricity usage.

With the States of Jersey funding the project in full, the construction of the facility itself has been budgeted at £93 million. An additional £10.3 million will cover the costs of project management, enabling works and the decommissioning of the island's existing incinerators.

The facility will be accompanied by a bulky waste recycling facility, with the capacity to pre-treat up to 40,000 tonnes of household, commercial and industrial waste a year.

The States of Jersey's director of waste strategy projects, Will Gardiner, explained that the plant's development represented the end of a lengthy process, involving the consideration of numerous technological options.

He said: "We'd looked at it for a very long time, from 2001 until 2005, Jersey did a draft Strategy and 56 different technologies were looked at. In 2005 we had the Solid Waste Strategy and we looked at another 20 technologies."

And, he told letsrecycle.com that the decision to opt for the in-house operated facility reflected a number of factors, including the absence of major waste management firms on the island and limits on the use of compost and digestate on the island's agricultural land.

Agriculture

Referring to Jersey's "unique" agricultural system, where Jersey potatoes are the main crop grown, he explained that the plant would have to process all the island's kitchen waste for the "foreseeable future" rather than processing it via composting or anaerobic digestion to be used on the land.

"Because our agricultural cycle is so short and intense, you don't have time for kitchen and vegetable waste to lie fallow for it to be absolutely safe according to supermarket protocols," Mr Gardiner explained, pointing to the fact that some retailers expected land to lie fallow for up to five years before compost or digestate from food waste could be used.

He also said that the facility would be run by the island's authorities because waste management companies "wouldn't be interested" in operating a facility on the island, while their lack of presence also means that the States of Jersey "tends to deal" with commercial and industrial waste as well, and as a result that will also be processed in the new plant.

Construction of the plant is expected to begin in early 2009, and taking in all of the island's non-inert residual waste by the summer of 2011.

Recycling

Jersey currently has a 30% recycling rate, which it hopes to increase to 36% by 2018. Mr Gardiner said that the new facility "won't discourage recycling - we'll be looking to roll out kerbside collections over the next two years".

However, he explained that the island's capacity to significantly boost its recycling rate further was "limited by our ability to take kitchen waste to land," referring to the difficulties with using processed food waste on land used to grow Jersey potatoes.