Plans for a plastics processing facility, four anaerobic digestion plants and two materials sorting projects have today (August 17) been named as the first seven schemes in the running for a share of the £28 million that the London Waste and Recycling Board expects to award to infrastructure projects in 2010/11.
The body said that the projects had been chosen to enter its “infrastructure pool” and will now be invited to develop full business cases for evaluation before a final decision on which organisations will receive funding is made.
The projects announced today are all capable of making a significant contribution towards this target
James Cleverly, chairman, London Waste and Recycling Board
The seven organisations named today are:
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Bywaters, who want to extend their existing materials recovery facility (MRF) in Newham to handle an extra 140,000 tonnes of waste a year;
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Coronation Nursery, proposing an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant processing 15,000 tonnes of food waste a year to generate electricity, heat, fertiliser and CO2 to use back into their greenhouses;
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Green Tech, seeking support for a plastic processing plant in Enfield, North London, handling up to 25,000 tonnes of plastic annually;
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Greenwich council, an AD facility located in Greenwich borough handling at least 25,000 tonnes of food and green waste annually;
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Powerday, who are proposing a new MRF in West London, dealing with 750,000 tonnes of recycling a year;
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South London Waste Partnership and Viridor Waste Management, an anaerobic digestion plant handling 30,000 tonnes of food waste a year from the London boroughs of Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton;
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The TEG Group, who are the proposed operator of the consortium that the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) have selected as their preferred bidder for a 30,000 tonne-a-year capacity merchant AD plant at the London Sustainable Industries Park.
The Board, which is tasked with delivering Mayor Boris Johnson's waste priorities for the capital, has not revealed how many of the seven projects will eventually receive funding or how much each short-listed scheme is seeking.
Capacity gap
However, its business plan for the current financial year, which was launched in April 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story), gives an indication of how it could look to allocate £28 million this year to close a projected waste infrastructure capacity gap in London.
This includes providing £12 million in funding to support 450,000 tonnes of annual capacity across three MRFs, £6 million to support 100,000 tonnes of annual processing capacity across two AD plants, £7.27 million to help fund 150,000 tonnes-a-year of thermal treatment capacity and £2.72 million to help bring 150,000 tonnes-a-year of mechanical biological treatment capacity on line.
Making today's announcement, the chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWaRB), James Cleverly, alluded to the business plan's goal of supporting technologies capable of diverting around a million tonnes of the capital's waste from landfill.
“The projects announced today are all capable of making a significant contribution towards this target,” he said. “Officers of the Board will now work closely with each organisation to work up their business cases to a high level to give them the best chance of successfully receiving funding from the Board.”
Mr Cleverly has identified 2010/11 as a “year of delivery” for the Board, as it continues the process of allocating £84 million in funding by 2012. To date, the Board has earmarked £12 in support for the proposed £80 million Biossence gasification facility in East London (see letsrecycle.com story), as well as funds for charities, a communications campaign, a reuse network and to encourage flats recycling.
The speed and focus of its funding allocation has, however, come under scrutiny from London councils (see letsrecycle.com story).
The Board has now said that it expects to announce the first of the projects in today's pool to receive funding next month.
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