Waste Incinerators

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is so good, as ever, to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. My goodness, that was a fiery presentation—I am not joking—on a hot topic. I expect nothing less from my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), because he has spoken to me many times about this issue, and I know that he has very much wanted to bring it to our attention in the Chamber. He has certainly done that in respect of the proposal for an incinerator in the Aire valley in his constituency, which would deal with 148,000 tonnes of commercial, industrial and municipal waste and is expected to be operational in a few years’ time.

Before going into detail on the particular proposal, I start by saying that my views have not changed at all. I have spoken about this many times in other debates, as has my hon. Friend, and the Government’s attention remains firmly on exactly what he talked about towards the end of his eloquent speech. Our intention is to focus on reducing, recycling, reusing and, indeed, cutting down on all waste and moving to a circular economy. This is absolutely the direction of travel, and we have targets in place to enable us to do that now.

We have a raft of targets. We have a target to increase overall recycling rates to 65% by 2035. We have a target for zero avoidable waste by 2050. We have a target of 10% of waste or less going to landfill by 2035. There are a lot of measures in the Environment Bill that will move us in that direction. I have just been before the Environmental Audit Committee to talk about one of the packaging reforms, the deposit return scheme, which will contribute towards driving us in the direction of cutting waste. I am pleased to say that today we launched the consultation, which is a big moment in moving us in the right direction.

For clarity, I reiterate that it was the Labour-run City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council that granted planning permission back in 2017. The council sends 58.4% of its collected and managed waste for incineration, which is interesting.

I will now talk about the Aire valley permission, but I also want to set out the steps that the Environment Agency took following that planning permission to grant its permits. In September 2018, Endless Energy Ltd applied to the Environment Agency for an environmental permit to operate an energy-from-waste site on Aire Valley Road. The agency’s technical assessment of the application began shortly after receiving the application, and it held its first public consultation between 1 November and 13 December 2018. Some 2,000 comments were received during that consultation. The agency then consulted further on its draft decision between 8 June and 12 August 2020, and it received 1,600 comments.

I take the points that my hon. Friend made pretty vociferously that there were some documents missing in the first consultation—I will not beat about the bush on that. It was an admin error, and the EA duly reacted, put them in and extended the consultation. I think he will agree that that did happen.

The agency then considered all the comments received during both the consultation stages, and the final decision document was produced and is publicly available. It describes how the EA considered the issues raised. The main concern, which my hon. Friend highlighted, was that the site is in a valley that regularly experiences temperature inversions, resulting in misty conditions and a perception that emissions from the process will be trapped in that mist.

The Environment Agency verified the modelling of air emissions provided by the applicant to ensure it included an appropriate variety of weather conditions, including temperature inversions in the valley. The agency also undertook its own detailed modelling of air emissions, and it is satisfied that the concerns are unfounded and the installation will not have a significant impact on air quality—the EA has to follow due process and do the modelling.

The EA has issued information to explain its decision making, as well as to explain how Endless Energy’s application was assessed and the factors taken into account. The agency’s decision document sets out the details and the reasons for proposing the conditions on the permit. As a result of this thorough process, the EA determined that the applicant provided sufficient information for it to be satisfied that the facility will not compromise air quality limits or standards and will meet the relevant environmental requirements for this type of facility. The Environment Agency therefore decided on 8 December 2020 to issue the permit to allow Endless Energy to operate the facility as described in the application and in the additional information provided.

It should be noted that the permit sets out the legally binding conditions that Endless Energy Ltd must follow to protect the air quality, the groundwater and the surface water, and to ensure the safe storage, management and disposal of waste. As with all energy from waste, the use of abatement systems is required to keep emissions and air pollutants within strict limits set down in legislation. That includes oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, metal smoke and dioxins.

The permit also include conditions to minimise the risk of accidents, noise, odour and so forth, and as part of its regulatory regime the EA carries out regular inspections. The facility will be subjected to those, but I assure my hon. Friend that I will hold the EA’s feet to the fire to ensure that those things are done and the due process is followed. It is essential that people feel that the due process is being followed and they are safe. I assure him that regular monitoring will be carried out. If the agency identifies that an energy-from-waste plant breaches any of its permit conditions, appropriate enforcement actions will be taken. That may be a warning, first of all, for a minor breach. Enforcement notices can be put in place or, indeed, a prosecution as and if necessary.

My hon. Friend raised concerns about the planning process. Of course, planning decisions are a matter for the local planning authority, which in this case is the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. The national planning policy framework sets out the planning policies for England and how they should be applied, including consideration for such things as traffic and the build-up of transport issues. He rightly made his views about the planning situation very clear—I will not comment on it—as did my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who made some similar comments about his own constituency.

We take air quality extremely seriously as a Government, and we are fully committed to reducing air pollution. The World Health Organisation has praised our UK clean air strategy as an example for the rest of the world to follow. Indeed, we are pouring £3.8 billion into cleaning up our air, and we have an enormous strategy of bringing in clean air zones across the country to keep people healthy, because this is a major health issue. Our landmark Environment Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley knows, is bringing through ambitious new air quality targets to help reduce the public health impacts.

I must point out that energy-from-waste plants in England are regulated, as I said, by the EA, and they must comply with the strict limits set down in legislation in terms of air quality. Public Health England’s position remains that modern, well run and regulated municipal waste incinerators do not have a significant impact on air quality. In addition, they must use what we call, technically, best available techniques—that is the kit and equipment that they have to put in to meet environmental standards and reinforce the levels of environmental protection. That is really important, and those techniques have recently been reviewed.

I reiterate my message at the beginning that, on a wider note, the Government are absolutely committed to cutting down waste. We will reduce, recycle and re-use. We are meeting all the targets that I outlined at the beginning. We are bringing through the measures that we need. What will happen is exactly what my hon. Friend suggests: there will be less waste. Producers will be responsible for all the waste and packaging that they put on the market. They will be responsible for its whole lifecycle and the full net costs. They will not want to have to pay for it to end up somewhere else, such as incineration, which is, bar landfill, right at the end of our waste hierarchy.

The ambition is to have less and less waste going to incineration. There will always be some that will have to go to the lower ends of the waste hierarchy, but the key is that the incinerators have to be safe, regulated, and well run. In a perfect world, not only would they generate energy from waste, but we would capture all the other heat that they create. They should be geared up for that in future.

The tax matter that my hon. Friend raised is really for Her Majesty’s Treasury. The 2018 Budget set out the Government’s long-term ambition to minimise the amount of waste going to incineration or landfill, but if the policies do not deliver that cut in waste the introduction of a tax on incineration will be considered. I think I will end there. It was a terrifically vociferous speech. He made his case unbelievably clearly, but hopefully the message that I am giving is that we are cutting down on waste, and we certainly take such things as air quality extremely seriously.

Question put and agreed to.