OPINION:Factors including tighter EU regulation and cost are undermining the point of the planned Poolbeg waste-to-energy plant, writes FRANK McDONALD
IF YOU believe incineration guru PJ Rudden, Ireland will face heavy EU fines if the Poolbeg waste-to-energy plant does not proceed. He says we “cannot meet EU landfill diversion targets” without it and, therefore, its provision “needs to be elevated to national strategic importance”.
Rudden’s firm of consultant engineers, RPS, has been paid nearly €26 million in fees by Dublin City Council to progress the Poolbeg project since 1999. A PR company in the RPS group (previously Mary Murphy and Associates) has received nearly €4.4 million for its services over the same period.
Currently president of professional institute Engineers Ireland, Rudden has not only strongly endorsed incineration, but also underlined the need for the ownership of waste to be “vested in local authorities” so they could contract its collection and direct it to treatment facilities such as Poolbeg.
A chapter on waste in the institute’s report, The State of Ireland 2012, says “the current unregulated collection of waste in Ireland, unique in the EU, cannot be allowed to continue as it is not in the national interest”, and complains of “stagnation in infrastructural development” due to a “policy vacuum”.
These claims have been hotly contested by Conor Walsh, technical director of SLR Consulting Ireland. In a recent letter to John Power, director general of Engineers Ireland, he writes the sector is “regulated by waste collection permits issued by local authorities”, which usually contain “hundreds of conditions”.
As for “stagnation”, Walsh notes “at least 665,000 tonnes of waste recovery infrastructure [has been] built in the last two to three years” – including Indaver Ireland’s new 200,000-tonne incinerator at Carranstown, Co Meath, and other facilities developed by Greenstar, Greyhound, Oxigen, Panda and Thorntons.
Several of the new facilities are viable mechanical and biological treatment (MBT) projects, producing solid recovered fuel, or SRF, to fuel cement kilns such as those of Lagan and Irish Cement in place of coal or other fossil fuels, and this “threatens the Poolbeg incinerator project”, according to Walsh.
By contrast, plans by local authorities to provide new waste facilities have been scrapped – biowaste facilities at Kilshane Cross, Fingal, and Ballyogan, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown; a landfill at Nevitt, Fingal; an MBT plant in Cork, and regional waste incinerators in the midlands, the midwest and Connacht.
As a result of the private sector investments, Walsh notes Ireland has met the EU landfill directive target in 2010 and is “very close to meeting the 2013 target” this year. He believes more stringent EU targets for 2016, on diversion of waste from landfill, will be met.
Ireland was allowed landfill 916,000 tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste per annum in 2010, but this falls to 610,000 tonnes in 2013 and just 427,000 tonnes in 2016. Such waste – comprising paper, cardboard, food, grass, leaves, etc – accounts for about two-thirds of all municipal solid waste in Ireland.
All can be composted. An SLR report compiled by Walsh for the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA), concluded “Ireland will achieve a national recycling rate of almost 50 per cent by 2016, mostly due to increasing roll-out of the organic brown bin to both households and commercial premises, as required by legislation”.
It noted the Dublin region “achieved a recycling rate of 46 per cent in 2009 with only partial roll-out of the brown bin, so 50 per cent recycling for Ireland is not considered overly ambitious . . . with or without Poolbeg”. Such a rate has been achieved by several European countries and by many local authorities in England.
Despite regulations on compostable waste recycling made in 2009, the roll-out of brown bins nationally is still below 50 per cent. Many local authorities have been slow to enforce regulations.
Waste volumes in all categories have been falling directly due to the recession. The most recent national waste report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed the total was down 16 per cent in 2010 from the 2007 peak of 3.4 million tonnes. Use of waste as an energy fuel grew 20 per cent in just 12 months.
Nearly three-quarters of all packaging waste is now being recovered – exceeding EU targets – and the EPA report confirmed Ireland met its 2010 target for diverting biodegradable waste from landfill, although it said continued investment was needed to treat biodegradables.
“All of the recent progress was made by private sector investment, with not a penny of public money,” says IWMA chairman Jim Kells. Even if only half of the developments were to proceed, SLR says Ireland “will comfortably meet the landfill directive target” for 2016 – without the Poolbeg project.
The Dublin local authorities remain committed to their public-private partnership deal with US waste management company Covanta, even though they will have to pay penalties if they fail to supply a minimum of 320,000 tonnes of waste for the incinerator annually – amounting to more than half of its capacity.
A total of €80 million has already been spent on the project, including €43.8 million in land acquisition costs, €33.3 million in fees to consultants, €1.8 million in legal fees, €336,700 in security costs and €152,000 in statutory fees. Of the total, only €12 million has been recouped so far by the four local authorities involved.
They have backed plans to have “franchise-bidding” for waste contracts and want ownership of municipal waste vested in local authorities so they can “plan and develop regional or inter-regional planned facilities of suitable scale whilst ensuring investments made by public and/or private bodies are realised”.
This is seen as code for Poolbeg, which Covanta has always regarded as a “national” facility, given its enormous capacity of 600,000 tonnes per annum. But the company has been rebuffed in both Leeds and Merthyr Tydfil, in Wales, where its proposals were judged by the authorities there to be much larger than was needed.
Indaver Ireland has offered to build a smaller, 400,000-tonne incinerator at Poolbeg, with no “put or pay” clause, but Dublin City Council has declined to talk to it because of its “contractual commitment” to Covanta. It has also given a “final” extension (to August 1st) to facilitate Covanta in raising funds for the project.
Its viability critically depends on Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan’s plan to change the regulatory regime by imposing “competition for the market”. If he goes down this road, it will inevitably result in judicial review proceedings being taken by waste management firms which fear their business would be ruined by the move to monopolisation.
Even the Competition Authority has changed its tune and now believes there are benefits to consumers from the current side-by-side competition. “If Dublin City Council could get out of its contract with Covanta, market forces would dictate what facilities are built and where,” says Kells – subject to planning and licensing, of course.
Rosheen McGuckian, managing director of Greenstar, has no doubt the Minister’s intention to divert waste from landfill is right, but says this is already happening – as the EPA’s figures show – and he’s “using the wrong policy, for which there’s no economic reason, to help a white elephant that’s too big for the market”.