Suffolk county council is seeking users for heat which will be produced from the energy-from-waste plant which it is developing at Great Blakenham, near Ipswich.
The facility is being built as part of the councils 25-year PFI-funded waste management contract with SITA UK, which was signed in September 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story) and given planning permission in July this year (see letsrecycle.com).
The facility will have the capacity to deal with 269,000 tonnes of waste-a-year from Suffolk, turning it into enough electricity for 30,000 households. Work is due to start on the facility early next year and it is expected to be fully operational by December 2014.
It will have the ability to produce combined heat and power (CHP) however the council are concerned that there may not be sufficient demand for it due to restrictions relating the customer locations and their demand for heat.
Commenting on the potential problems Cliff Matthews, regional manager for SITA UK, explained that potential customers would need to live within a four-mile radius to benefit as the cost of pipework to the rest of the county would prove prohibitive. The customers need for heat would also need to be constant, not dependent on season or time of day meaning the provision of heat to local housing can only be considered if there are other options as well.
However, if we put in a system to serve local businesses, and there were new houses to be built nearby, they could benefit too, he added.
Lisa Chambers, portfolio holder of waste at Suffolk county council, said: The energy from waste plant provides us with a cheaper, greener solution for disposing of household waste which cant reasonably be recycled. Switching to energy from waste puts our waste to good use and will be at least 350 million cheaper than continuing to landfill. If our contractors SITA UK could also get a heating system running from the facility, it really would be the icing on the cake.
Heat generated from EfW plants in the UK is not often utilised unlike in some other European countries such as Denmark where it account for more than a third of district heating. One exception is in Sheffield which where Veolias energy from waste was
is rare in the UK as heat is often not collected for use however an EfW plant in Sheffield was praised for its use of CHP to provide heat to buildings across the city through a district network (see letsrecycle.com story). However it is deemed a more viable option in Copenhagen where more than one third of district heat is provided by EfW facilities.
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