£150m ‘green power’ station firm seeking waste contract

Councillors in Hull last week approved plans for the plant, which will use household waste to power more than 25,000 homes and produce 900,000 therms of gas energy.

The proposals represent a significantly greener alternative to the failed incinerator at Saltend, which generated huge opposition and was finally ditched in January.

The plant, earmarked for the the former council-owned Dalton Street waste depot and the former ADM cocoa mills site on Cleveland Street, will use a combination of the latest technologies developed to handle waste, advanced gasification and anaerobic digestion.

Developer C Spencer, which is preparing to move into new headquarters in the Island Wharf building on the city’s waterfront, will now put in a bid for just under £20m towards the project from the European Regional Development Fund.

Next year the waste management contract run by Hull and East Riding Councils and previously held by Waste Recycling Group, which had developed the incinerator proposals, should go out to tender.

Chief executive Charlie Spencer said if they were unsuccessful, they could ship in waste wood.

But he added: “I don’t think that will be necessary because I think the plant is ideal to deal with the waste in the area.

“That’s entirely up to Hull and East Riding councils but they have had a good part of the year consulting people and the purpose of that is to develop a joint waste strategy.

“They are coming to the end of that process and the end of the year beginning next year should start a procurement process.

“Obviously we are perfectly timed to take part in that.

“We would hope to put in a winning proposal to the councils. If we were successful it would enable us to finance the scheme, as long as we get the ERDF grant.”

The advanced gasification plant will take 210,000 tonnes of municipal waste, while an anaerobic digestor could take up to 50,000 tonnes of food waste.

“At the moment there’s 230,000 tonnes going in by road and coming out by road – our plant means it doesn’t have to come out by road any more,” he added.

The gas it produces could be enriched with propane and pumped into the national grid – or potentially power the councils’ refuse trucks.

Dr Les Gornell, the UK’s top anaerobic digestion specialist, is presenting a workshop at the Humber Chemical Focus-led “Biorenewables in the Humber” conference on October 20 at Bishop Burton College.

Dr Gornell – also known as Dr Sludge – said the scheme was “fantastic”.

He said: “The Spencer project with its combination of gasification and anaerobic digestion puts it ahead of the field in all of Europe – it is so far in advance of an old fashioned incinerator.

“The old incinerator needed an awful lot of stack clean up... if you look at the emissions standards these achieve, starting your car in the morning would probably pollute your house more than this would in a week.”

Dr Gornell said the heat provided would be great for a district heating system, supplying homes.

But that was down to politics: “The question is which part of the council is going to own a district heating system and who is going to look after it when it breaks down?”

Hull and East Riding Councils signed a 25-year contract with WRG in 1999, including provision for an incinerator. It was initially earmarked for Foster Street, Hull, but planning permission was refused.

Permission for Saltend was granted in 2007, but it was never built.