Speaking at the Energy from Waste Association’s annual lunch yesterday, Mr Hain said that energy from waste is needed to reduce the impact of global warming and to meet the proposed targets in the Renewables Energy Obligation.
Mr Hain said: “We recognise that the government’s whole approach to the problem of waste must be reassessed to meet the challenging targets of the waste strategy. Energy from waste has an important role to play in increasing the take-up of renewable energy and to meet local needs and wishes. We are working very hard on the renewable energy agenda.”
The Minister added that renewable energies were one of his top priorities and said that he was determined to meet the 10 per cent renewable electricity generation target by the end of the decade.
He highlighted the “substantial research and development budget” that was available to explore the development and application of newer cleaner technologies and said: “Gasification and pyrolysis offers enormous potential and I urge those in a position to develop technologies to take advantage.”
But Mr Hain warned that energy from waste should not crowd out recycling. He said that in time we will see substantial greening of the energy industry as it takes on renewable energy.
Action
Malcolm Chilton, chairman of the Energy from Waste Association, who was also speaking at yesterday’s event questioned the Minister’s emphasis on new technologies and said “these technologies have the potential to make significant contributions in the future, meeting the government’s 10 per cent target needs action now. The programme of renewable energy projects needs to be kick-started by an expansion of the technologies that have been proven to work.”
He added: “We want to get value from as much waste as possible and extract an increasing proportion of it from the waste stream. But the debate has moved on from the issue of incineration versus recycling, it is now how recycling, composting and energy recovery can be combined to reduce our reliance on landfill.”
Mr Chilton added that waste management contracts require operators to optimise efforts to recycle and compost and so there is no need to worry about energy from waste crowding out recycling. Instead he called for the inclusion of energy from waste in the proposed Renewables Obligation.
He said: “I think in the submissions we have made on this subject we have demonstrated a clear economic case for continuing financial support. That case demonstrates that in relation to changes in electricity pricing driven by government policy, especially long-term reductions in the price of fossil fuel generated electricity, and relative to the economic position of other renewable energy sources, there is a clear cut case for our inclusion in the obligation.”
Mr Chilton also criticised the current planning system and called for changes to be made. He added: “Gaining planning permission is now the biggest single barrier to the desired expansion of renewable energy. There are wider implications – influential reports have shown that planning barriers are affecting the UK economy and competitiveness.”
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