Despite failing to win a judicial review into the decision to grant planning permission to the 585,000 tonne facility last month (see letsrecycle.com story), Ken Livingstone's office insisted that the plant was still not in the best interests of London as a whole.
” The Belvedere incinerator will be inefficient and it will fail to capture the heat that is generated “
– Ken Livingstone
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, a spokesperson said: “The mayor will be talking to Bexley council about how to continue to challenge the development of an incinerator at Belvedere.”
Efficiency
The 200 million incinerator, which is proposed by waste management firm Cory Environmental for a riverside site in Bexley, is intended to process waste from the Western Riverside Waste Authority, the City of London and Westminster council. This residual municipal waste is currently sent to Mucking landfill in Essex.
If the plants development goes ahead, the mayor believes that the facility would discourage the recycling of London's waste and be inefficient at producing energy.
The spokesperson explained: “The mayor believes strongly that building this incinerator undermines the battle against climate change The mayor supports the use of new and efficient technologies that extract energy from our waste and combined heating, but the Belvedere incinerator will be inefficient and it will fail to capture the heat that it generated.”
Mr Livingstons'e; move to raise energy efficiency comes as Defra is examining the issue as part of its work on the Waste Strategy review. This has come about because efficiency levels are also featuring in the review of the Waste Framework Directive. The case argued is that UK incinerators are not as efficient as some on the continent which produce both heat and electricity.
Ken Livingstone's office added: “The incinerator will impact on local people, means there will be less incentive for London's rubbish to be recycled and is not in the best interests of London as a whole.”
Cory
Responding to the mayor's plans to continue to fight against Belvedere, Cory Environmental said that even if a new challenge was mounted, it was confident that it would also be unsuccessful.
A spokeswoman said: “We were always confident that the application for a judicial review would be unsuccessful and we are confident that even if there is another challenge it will also be unsuccessful. We have a strong case and London needs the Belvedere facility to deal with its waste.”
Cory claimed that the incinerator would not damage recycling rates as all the areas from which it collected residual waste had kerbside collections of recyclable materials.
It explained that other grounds on which Ken Livingstone and Bexley council had lodged there application for a judicial review – that Belvedere was not the nearest appropriate site to where the waste was being generated and that there would not be enough waste to burn in the incinerator – had already been dismissed by the court.
The spokeswoman said: “Cory looked into hundreds of sites and the secretary of state and inspectors agreed that this was the only one appropriate in terms of river access and its London location.”
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