Second windfall worth £10.2M for north London councils from publicly owned energy-from-waste facility

• Follows previous dividend of £4.75M in November from NLWA

 Seven London councils are set to share in a large windfall dividend worth £10.2 million. The windfall is due to extra income received from electricity generation at north London’s energy-from-waste facility in Edmonton, which is overseen by public body, North London Waste Authority (NLWA). 

This windfall, which is only possible because the facility is wholly publicly owned, follows NLWA’s dividend of £4.75 million to its boroughs last November. Two million residents in Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, and Waltham Forest will benefit. This is in stark contrast to dividends, which will be issued to shareholders of the big energy companies, following recent record profits. 

Since 1971, the Edmonton facility has used household bin-bag waste to generate electricity for the National Grid instead of sending it to landfill, with income from energy generation offset against the cost of waste disposal for council taxpayers. Due to price rises in global energy supply markets, the facility like all other energy generators, saw its income rise dramatically in 2022. The sale of recycling collected across north London has also increased NLWA’s income due to strong market demand for recycled commodities

NLWA Members approved issuing the windfall to the boroughs at an Authority meeting today, 9 February 2023. 

Across the 2023-24 financial year, NLWA will reduce the monthly cost of waste disposal and recycling that the councils usually pay. These significant reductions will mean that the boroughs will have more money for essential services and initiatives to support their residents. 

NLWA Chair, Cllr Clyde Loakes, said: “While we all want to see energy prices normalise, in these exceptional times, rather than windfall profits going to private shareholders, NLWA can ensure that local people and communities can benefit instead. It also shows that having a wholly publicly owned, well managed facility is far preferable to paying vast sums to a private contractor to dispose of household waste.

“And that’s why NLWA is now overseeing the building of a replacement facility, an advanced, high-tech Energy Recovery Facility so that the public can continue to benefit from public ownership in the long term.”

The new facility will not only generate electricity but will also produce heat for thousands of local homes, bringing energy security and freedom from gas boilers. The current facility will continue to operate until the new facility is ready in 2026.

Meanwhile, the Government’s new Electricity Generator Levy, which began on 1 January, includes energy-from-waste facilities as well as fossil-fuel energy generators. The new tax will likely curtail future dividends to the boroughs from Edmonton’s energy-from-waste facility if energy prices remain unusually high during and after 2024.

NLWA would like to see publicly owned energy-from-waste facilities excluded from the tax so that local facilities can continue to directly benefit local residents and their communities.

• Each borough pays a monthly levy to NLWA proportional to the volume and composition of waste collected the previous year. The levy pays for the processing of recycling, the disposal of waste, and the operation of reuse and recycling centres. The following amounts will be subtracted from the cost of waste disposal during 2023-24.