Written Evidence submitted by the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network (UKWIN) [NPP 179]
1.1. UKWIN supports local campaigns against waste incinerators and presses the case to Government for moving waste management to the top tiers of the waste hierarchy, the adoption of high recycling targets and increased reuse. UKWIN has a membership of over 300, comprising both individuals and local community groups.
1.2. UKWIN notes that The CLG Select Committee wishes to examine planning for energy infrastructure (excluding energy infrastructure covered by National Policy Statements) as part of their inquiry into the Operation of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), and the waste incineration aspect of energy infrastructure will be the focus of UKWIN's evidence.
3.1. The primary guidelines for planning decisions relating to waste infrastructure is currently Planning Policy Statement 10: Planning for Sustainable Waste Management (PPS10). A streamlined update to this policy is expected to be released later this year.
3.2. PPS10 section 3 (Key Planning Objectives) includes the requirements that: "...all planning authorities should, to the extent appropriate to their responsibilities, prepare and deliver planning strategies that:
– help deliver sustainable development through driving waste management up the waste hierarchy, addressing waste as a resource and looking to disposal as the last option, ...
– help implement the national waste strategy, and supporting targets, are consistent with obligations required under European legislation..."
3.3. These requirements:
3.3.1. (a) Imply the need for planning authorities, when assessing applications for waste infrastructure, to satisfy themselves, i.e. to require evidence to the effect, that the infrastructure concerned does in fact enable waste management to move up the waste hierarchy; and
3.3.2. (b) have been supplemented at intervals by guidelines, issued by DEFRA and DECC, designed to assist decision-makers within local authorities regarding the considerations relevant to assessing planning applications for energy infrastructure in the particular context of their contributions to driving waste management up the hierarchy and reducing Global Warming emissions.
3.4. These guidelines are aimed at assisting planning officers in assessing both how to meet the requirements of PPS10 and in assessing if applications for energy infrastructure meet these requirements.
4.1. UKWIN wishes to draw the attention of the Select Committee to the extent that the PPS requirements, as supplemented by the guidelines (listed, and annotated, in the Appendix at the end of this submission), are being overlooked by planning officers and planning committees.
4.2. From engagement with local authority planning officers, it is clear that some at least are simply unaware of their responsibilities in this area. Where this is the case, local authorities are especially vulnerable to applicants who misrepresent planning policy through omissions, exaggerations, and so on.
4.3. The principal implication arising from this lack of awareness or oversight is that planning consent is being given to applications for energy infrastructure, i.e. waste incineration plant, that either does not meet, or for which evidence is not put forwards to demonstrate that it meets, these requirements and guidelines.
4.4. In some cases the proposed infrastructure not only fails to move waste management up the hierarchy from disposal (i.e. because the proposed incinerator fails to meet the R1 relative efficiency threshold required to qualify as a recovery operation), but can actively drive waste management down the waste hierarchy (e.g. by incinerating waste at a disposal-level incinerator that would otherwise have been treated at a recovery-level incinerator, or an AD facility or recycled / composted).
4.5. Furthermore, incineration proposals can actually results in worse Global Warming emissions than would have been the case had the waste concerned been sent to landfill, counter to the Government’s carbon reduction strategies.
4.6. We have concluded that no adequate mechanisms exist for ensuring that the attention of local authority planning officers and committees is drawn to the issue of, and subsequent updates to, guidelines relevant to assessing energy infrastructure planning applications.
4.7. As evidenced by reports by planning officers to planning committees, existing mechanisms do not operate satisfactorily.
4.8. Moreover, whilst UKWIN has identified these instances whilst scrutinising planning applications as part of the planning consultation process, we do not have the resources to scrutinise every incinerator application in depth.
4.9. The fact that UKWIN has been able to identify such flaws in the planning processes with which we have been involved – and the fact that UKWIN was often the only consultee to point out some of the flaws in the planning officer's reports – suggests both that there have been further instances of which we are unaware and that there is an absence of adequate auditing arrangements to prevent planning committees from being presented with flawed reports from their planning officers.
4.10. For example, UKWIN requested a call-in of the Lock Street incinerator application in response to the Planning Officer’s Report, available from: http://moderngov.sthelens.gov.uk/documents/s30569/P-2013-0475.pdf in advance of the St Helens Council Planning Committee meeting of 10th December 2013.
4.11. The Lock Street application [St Helens Council Ref. P/2013/0475] attempted to treat an incineration facility as if it were an R1 low carbon facility, for the purpose of interpreting and applying local and national policy, despite the fact that no information had been provided in relation its anticipated performance against the R1 formula or its anticipated performance against the NPPF definition of low carbon energy. And they would have gotten away with this it if it were not for the work of UKWIN.
4.12. Furthermore, the St Helens Council Officer’s Report failed to assess the proposed facility’s position within the waste hierarchy or its performance against PPS10 Paragraph 25, and effectively treated the incinerator application as if it were for a recovery facility when it was not.
4.13. In response to concerns raised by UKWIN the St Helens Council Planning Officer altered the wording of the report, but failed to draw the significance of this correction to the attention of the planning committee in the revised report.
4.14. The interpretation and application of national policy in relation to low carbon energy, the transition to a low carbon economy, and the waste hierarchy are matters of national significance, and it would have been very possible that the application would have been determined without full and proper consideration of the planning merits and demerits in relation to an accurate interpretation of relevant planning policies had it not been for UKWIN's intervention.
4.15. UKWIN's engagement with this one planning application took weeks of work, and the resources are simply not available for UKWIN to police and correct each and every relevant planning application.
4.16. As committee reports were only made available about a week in advance of the planning committee meetings, UKWIN also had to manage a great deal of time pressure in relation to correcting mistakes, especially when clarifying mattes that required reading through hundreds of pages of complex documentation which in some cases necessitated contacting third parties, e.g. to secure written clarification from the Environment Agency regarding a matter that was central to the application's determination.
4.17. Several versions of the Officer's Report were produced due to UKWIN's efforts to highlight inadequacies in previous versions of the Officer's Report, the consultation for the application, and the Applicant's further submissions (made in response to concerns and deficiencies raised by UKWIN). These documents are all available from the Council's website, and can be provided upon request.
4.18. One version of the Officer's Report features, without challenge, the bold and erroneous statement that: "...the Government was required to ensure all EfW facilities were R1 Recovery facilities by 2008, so it is highly unlikely that the Environment Agency would grant an Environmental Permit for anything but an R1 Recovery EfW facility at this point in time..."
4.19. In response to this comment UKWIN was able, at the eleventh hour, to secure confirmation from the Environment Agency that: "There is no requirement for MWI to be R1 by 2008" and that: "The granting of an environmental permit is not dependent on R1 being designated". However, there is no indication whatsoever that the EA would have corrected, or even been aware of, this statement in the Officer's Report had it not been for UKWIN's intervention.
4.20. Sadly, there are numerous other examples of similar errors having been made by other planning officers in other areas when considering incinerator applications, including but not limited to: Surrey (Shepperton), Hampshire (Eastleigh and Micheldever).
4.21. UKWIN is happy to provide the Select Committee, on request, with further details of individual instances.
5.1. Some of the guidelines that are intended to inform decisions about waste infrastructure, that are also relevant to energy infrastructure, are incomplete and/or out-of-date.
5.2. For example, Guidance for local planning authorities on implementing planning requirements of the European Union Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) dated December 2012 fails to draw attention to two key sections of the Directive, namely Section 47 and Annex II. Neither do the guidelines refer to the relevant DEFRA and DECC guidelines. The WFD Guidance pre-dates the February 2014 reissue of the EfW Guide to the debate and Energy recovery for residual waste, A carbon based modelling approach (also published in February 2014).
6.1. Ensure, by adequate audit arrangements accompanied by other measures, including remedial measures where necessary, that local planning procedures follow the Government’s guidelines.
6.2. The Environment Agency (EA), as planning consultee, currently focuses primarily on permitting issues and on flooding. A failure on the part of the EA to object to a planning application for a waste incinerator is often misinterpreted as support for the proposal – not least because the EA is a statutory consultee. This is especially the case where the EA fail to explicitly state that they have limited the scope of their planning consultation response.
6.3. The EA does not adequately fulfil their role as statutory consultee, in contradistinction to the more active approach adopted by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). So, one potential solution would be to direct and fund the EA to take a more robust approach to their role as planning consultee, especially regarding applicant claims both recovery status and low-carbon energy.
6.4. In particular the EA could ensure that:
6.4.1. Any concerns raised by the EA are not downplayed or omitted from the Committee Report;
6.4.2. Incineration, including gasification and pyrolysis, proposals are not being treated as a proposal for a recovery facility under the waste hierarchy, unless the R1 credentials of the proposal have been robustly demonstrated to the EA's satisfaction;
6.4.3. An incinerator is not being characterised as 'good for climate change' or as being 'low carbon' or 'mostly renewable' when this has not been robustly demonstrated by the applicant; and
6.4.4. That the potential to actually deliver Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is not exaggerated, and that applicant claims (and planning officer statements contained within committee reports) do not go beyond that which has been robustly demonstrated by the applicant as part of their planning application.
The guidelines concerned include:
Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/applying-the-waste-hierarchy-evidence-summary
Page 5, note 2: "The revised Waste Framework Directive sets an energy efficiency threshold above which municipal waste incinerators can be classified as recovery facilities, and below which they continue to be classified as disposal facilities..."
Available from: http://archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste/residual/newtech/documents/incineration.pdf
Section 1, Introduction: "The more efficient the energy generation process, e.g. CHP, the lower the carbon emissions are per unit of energy produced and the greater the energy and carbon benefits. Hence when considering energy recovery, carbon emissions need to be considered in terms of composition of the residual waste stream, the type of energy produced (heat and/or power) and the overall generating efficiency of the facility. The growing importance of climate change means the carbon footprint of waste management needs to be fully considered in selecting technologies’. The document goes on to refer to tools aimed at assisting the comparison and assessment of the environmental performance of different waste options..."
It should be noted that, in practice, whilst many of the planning applications for incinerators refer to the potential for CHP, the facilities actually constitute electricity-only incinerators, i.e. the heat generated is not harnessed for district heating schemes or the like. In these circumstances, only some 15% - 24% (at best) of the available energy in the waste will be recovered, in many cases less than 20%.
In almost every instance incinerator planning applications focus on waste availability and not on the demand for heat by industry or by a local community. Hence, the actual opportunities to improve efficiency and thereby reduce the carbon impact (in terms of unit of carbon dioxide equivalent per unit of energy gainfully recovered) do not exist.
Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-energy-use-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-for-appraisal
The information and toolkit are designed to assist planning staff, amongst others, in evaluating the carbon performance of energy infrastructure, on a year by year basis, against that of marginal grid energy sources which themselves are progressively decarbonising.
Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-from-waste-a-guide-to-the-debate
Chapter 5, Paragraph 219: "Energy from waste must support the management of waste in line with the waste hierarchy. Energy from waste should seek to reduce or mitigate the environmental impacts of waste management and then seek to maximise the benefits of energy generation".
Paragraph 245: "Recent modelling [see Energy recovery for residual waste , A carbon based modelling approach, below] conducted by DEFRA and published alongside this document has examined these factors further and considered the implications for the long term development of energy from waste. It identifies that there are potential balance points beyond which energy from waste could perform worse than landfill in carbon terms..."
The modelling confirms the two rules identified above, and additionally shows that long term changes in the energy mix being offset by incineration has significant consequences for the relative demerits of incineration versus landfill.
There are clear messages in terms of the potential trends as to where the focus needs to be to move away from these balance points and to maximise the potential of energy from waste in the long term.
Paragraph 246: "The modelling confirms the two rules identified above but additionally shows that long term changes in the energy mix being offset by energy from waste has significant consequences for the relative merits of energy from waste versus landfill. As energy decarbonises, increasing efficiency alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee maintaining the primacy of energy from waste over landfill in carbon terms, with the biogenic content of the waste feedstock becoming the overriding determinant".
It is clear to UKWIN, but not necessarily to planning officers, that biogenic material, such as food waste, should not be incinerated if it could have been recycled, composted or sent for AD.
Paragraphs 58 and 59. "The potential for energy from waste to consume materials which could otherwise be managed higher up in the waste hierarchy is a legitimate concern. This applies to prevention and reuse but is most commonly identified in relation to recycling...Government’s aim is to get the most energy out of residual waste, rather than to get the most waste into energy recovery. This reflects the desire to move waste up the waste hierarchy and the drive to prevent, reuse and recycle in the first instance."
As the EfW Guide states, in relation to refuse derived fuels (RDF):
Paragraph 263: "Unless it can be clearly demonstrated there is an overall environmental benefit in doing so (as an exception to the hierarchy) biogenic material that might otherwise have been separated and more beneficially processed in a different way (e.g. through AD) should not be left in or added to the RDF ."
Available from: http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=19019
This recently issued document contains details of the modelling referred to in Energy from Waste – a Guide to the Debate, and demonstrates the extent to which incineration infrastructure can turn from being a carbon benefit to being a carbon burden as the electricity grid as a whole decarbonises.
Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/framework/
This Directive represents the origin of the Waste Hierarchy but also contains, in Annex II, the definitive means for confirming whether an individual municipal waste incineration plant achieves recovery status or fails to do so, and remains classed as disposal at the very bottom of the waste hierarchy.