Councillors in Buckinghamshire are expected to approve the award of the councils 30-year residual waste treatment contract to FCC Environment, at a Cabinet meeting on Monday (July 23).
In a report issued this week, Buckinghamshire county councils Waste Procurement Project board has recommended that the cabinet finalise the deal with the Spanish-owned FCC, which was known as WRG until recently.
The company was named in February 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story) as preferred for the deal, which will involve the treatment of an estimated 109,000 tonnes of waste per year, and has an option for a five year extension.
Under the proposals put forward by FCC Environment, the company will build a 295,000 tonne capacity energy-from-waste incinerator on the landfill site at Greatmoor, near Calvert, to treat non-recyclable waste collected across the county. Planning permission for the plant was granted in April 2012, with environmental permits issued in May.
FCC will finance the construction of the plant, although under the terms of the deal Buckinghamshire county council will repay 85% of the capital funding when the plant is successfully commissioned. The facility is expected to produce 22MW of energy, enough to power 36,000 homes.
Two waste transfer stations, at Amersham and High Heavens, will receive waste from the surrounding areas for onward transport to the Greatmoor facility.
The contract is expected to cost the council around 275 million, but it expects to make savings of over 150 million over the life of the contract, as a result of sending less waste to landfill.
Recommendation
In the report to be put before the cabinet, Martin Dickman, the councils waste partnership manager, said: The benefits of FCC Environments proposal relative to the alternative treatment options hold significant weight in the decision making process and the recommendation of the Waste Procurement Project Board is that, based on the procurement process followed to date, the residual waste treatment contract should be awarded to FCC Environment subject to the provisions in the detailed recommendations.
US energy-from-waste incineration specialists Covanta had originally been named as the preferred bidder for the Buckinghamshire county council deal in September 2009, but in March 2010 the council changed its stance due to a legal issue over proposals for a 390,000 tonne a year EfW facility at Rookery Pit in Bedfordshire (see letsrecycle.com story).
If awarded, the residual waste treatment contract would not be FCCs first in the county, having been awarded a seven-year 22 million deal to manage the countys ten Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) in October 2011, replacing the previous contractor Aylesbury Secondary Metals (see letsrecycle.com).
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