Royton Incinerator – not as clean and green as it sounds

25 November 2020

Oldham & Saddleworth Green Party says that the proposed plant has dangers for residents and the environment.

There are plans to build an incinerator for commercial waste at Mossdown Road, Royton.  It is called an Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) because energy from burning waste is converted into electricity for the national grid. It is presented as a safe and green way of dealing with waste. But it poses dangers to residents in surrounding areas and contributes to climate change. We need to be dealing with waste in clean, green ways – reduce, reuse and recycle.

Air Pollution

Synenergy, the developers, admit that they have not completed a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment on the air pollution from traffic to and from the plant and emissions from the chimney. Yet they are asking people for their views in the absence of this information.

Emissions include chemicals and particles harmful to people and the natural environment. Synenergy have to do ongoing monitoring and reporting to the Environment Agency who set the permissable levels. Reports from areas with ERFs across the country say that the Environment Agency doesn’t act quickly enough on breaches and the sanction system is inadequate. For some emissions there is no level below which they are totally harmless. 

Increasing climate change

Preventing further climate change that threatens all our futures is an emergency. We need to take urgent action to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere to net zero. 

The electricity generated by the incinerator is being presented as low carbon because waste is dealt with locally, reducing carbon emissions from transporting it by road across the country. But nothing is being said about the carbon emissions from the chimney stack.

Carbon emissions from these incinerators will stop us reaching the government’s 2050 net zero target, let alone Greater Manchester’s 2038 or Oldham Council’s 2030 targets. The carbon emissions come mainly from burning non recyclable plastics made from petroleum.

Not the way to go

Government policy is to fund building of ERF incinerators to dispose of our waste. More of our electricity supply will depend on generating waste. We need to go in the opposite direction to reduce waste: investing in design and production techniques that use less materials; reclaiming more materials through better recycling techniques; reusing and repairing. It is calculated that more jobs would be created and it would be better for the economy than ERFs.

Recently the Green Party joined with many other organisations and local campaigns to call on the government to change direction: to require the waste sector, including incinerator emissions, to be zero carbon by 2035 and switch investment to reduction, reuse and recycling.

Learning from Denmark

Denmark has made most use of ERF incinerators to generate electricity and have ended up importing plastic waste to feed them, increasing carbon emissions. The Danish government has recognised they now need to close 30% of them to meet climate change targets.

A greener healthier Oldham?

Oldham Council is backing this incinerator as part of its aim to make our borough greener and healthier. It needs to update its information on ERF incinerators catching up with recent research that shows they are not low carbon energy and with what is happening in Denmark. In 2018 the Council rejected a planning application for an incinerator on the Mossdown Road site. It needs to reject the planning application for this one too.

Concerned?

There is a public consultation currently running on the plan until 2 December 2020 with a questionnaire available at https://mossdownroaderf.co.uk/

More Information

Announcement in Oldham Chronicle - ‘Council leader backs plans for £150m investment in Royton energy recovery facility’: https://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/news-features/139/main-news/135855/council-leader-backs-plans-for-%C2%A3150m-investment-in-royton-energy-recovery-facility 

Information on incinerators from local campaigns across the country - UK Without Incinerators Network:   https://ukwin.org.uk

Denmark’s Dilemma: https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-devilish-waste-trash-energy-incineration-recycling-dilemma/ 

Recycling will decline if waste burners go ahead See the Green Party press release 16 November 2020 in News on the national Green Party website: https://www.greenparty.org.uk






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