NLWA welcomes government announcement on stricter standards for new waste incinerators

North London Waste Authority (NLWA) welcomes the government’s announcement of stricter standards for new energy from waste facilities. The government says new incinerators should use the best pollution controls, make use of the heat they produce and be carbon capture ready. Any new facilities will also have to help lower the amount of waste sent to landfill or enable the replacement of older plants. All of these criteria, and more, are already being met or exceeded by NLWA as we redevelop the Edmonton EcoPark.  

Cllr Clyde Loakes MBE, Chair of NLWA said, “I’m pleased to say that our new world-class energy recovery facility - which is currently under construction - will meet the strict new standards set out by government, acting as an exemplar for future facilities. Since our Development Consent Order was granted, thirty facilities have been approved in the UK and none offer the same world-class environmental features as ours. It is right that projects developed by the private sector emulate NLWA and provide clean and safe waste disposal and low carbon heat and power for local residents.”

NLWA’s new publicly owned facility will replace the energy from waste plant in Edmonton which first began operating in 1971. Its main purpose is to provide the least polluting solution to residual waste thrown away by the two million residents that NLWA serves. The new facility will supply heating and hot water to thousands of local homes and will be ready for carbon capture in the future. The new plant will be the first of its kind in the UK to benefit from Selective Catalytic Reduction, which is a world-class technology for controlling emissions of nitrogen dioxide. It will also be the first in the UK to have a combined dry/wet scrubber to make doubly sure that particulates are captured.

The government’s announcement comes alongside analysis of residual waste infrastructure which shows that London’s energy from waste capacity will be 1.44 million tonnes less than the amount of residual waste produced. Cllr Loakes warned that the government must therefore do all it can to reduce the systemic causes of avoidable waste:  

“Much more must be done to reduce waste from being created in the first place. The government must implement measures to dramatically reduce the vast volumes of waste received by local authorities. Extended Producer Responsibility must be broadened beyond packaging to include textiles and other products, so that businesses make goods that are far less wasteful and damaging to our planet. Unnecessary and unrecyclable plastics need to be designed out or replaced with recyclable alternatives, and the Deposit Return Scheme must be implemented and include glass so that less recyclables end up in bins. We have also been asking the government to give councils the powers to make recycling compulsory.”