It is important that the soon-to-be-published Localism Bill does not slow down the development of energy from waste facilities.
That is the opinion of Matthew Farrow, head of energy, transport & planning at the Confederation of British Industry, who was speaking on Tuesday (December 7) at a meeting of the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group in Westminster.
I wonder how easy it will be to avoid applications being bogged down in what in what is and what is not ‘sustainable development'
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Mr Farrow, who will become director of policy for the Environmental Services Association in January 2011, explained that businesses were very concerned about diverting waste from landfill and about energy security, and said that a “number of big manufacturers” were turning to the technology to help them manage their costs.
This had led to the CBI producing a report on the topic in November, which claimed that the UK could quadruple the amount of energy it produces from waste by 2015, he explained (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, he said that the organisation had not received “much encouragement” that the forthcoming Localism Bill, expected to be published in the next week, would make it easier to build plants.
The Localism Bill is set to contain a wide range of measures to shift power from central government into the hands of individuals, communities and councils – including decisions over planning. This has raised concerns that proposals for waste plants may be stopped in their tracks.
Plans to include an assumption in favour of ‘sustainable development'- to incentivise councils to grant planning permission to facilities – may do little to alleviate the situation, Mr Farrow added.
He said: “I wonder how easy it will be to avoid applications being bogged down in what in what is and what is not ‘sustainable development'. It's important that we all work together to ensure that the Localism Bill does not slow down development of EfW as it is important and solves some of the problems we are trying to get our head around.”
Mr Farrow's concerns echoed those expressed by the ESA and Chartered Institution of Wastes Management in October (see letsrecycle.com story) and were mirrored by others at the event.
Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said that she was worried because the UK had steep renewable energy targets to meet.
She commented: “With regards to localism and are we in trouble? It does worry me. We have challenging targets to meet. The locals saying no I don't think will help us”.
Caroline Jackson, former MEP and raporteur for the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, questioned Lord Taylor of Holbeach, the DECC spokesman who gave the keynote address at the event, about what the government would do if the policy failed.
She asked: “What happens to your localism agenda if your locals say no to everything?”
Scale
Responding to these concerns, Lord Taylor said that that the whole idea of localism was “based on the fact that communities generally know what's in their interest”.
He added: “I think scale is one of the most important things. Most communities realise that if they produce waste they need a way of dealing with it. Much [opposition to plants] often relates to the freighting in of waste.
“I have faith in the localism programme. I think it will work. I think it is the only sustainable programme by encouraging buy-in and giving priority to sustainable development”.
Lord Taylor's comments were welcomed by Paul Levett, deputy chief executive for Veolia Environmental Services.
Mr Levett said: “I totally agree with Lord Taylor about the scale of plants. It's important that we convince local people that the plants are for their waste. We have not been helped by the Infrastructure Planning Commission which put in place a 50MW minimum which encouraged larger plants than appropriately-sized plants.”
Register for free to comment