Enviroparks - the Hirwaun Advanced Incinerator

My previous posts on the ‘Enviroparks’ development in Hirwaun led to debate both on the blogs, particularly on the Syniadau Blog and on twitter. I found myself in the rather strange position of disagreeing with a number of people I normally agree with 100%. In response I agreed to write a more detailed post of my views as to the problems with the plans in Hirwaun.

Let’s kick off with a more general point about waste management. We continue to produce far too much waste as a society. There are examples of countries across Europe where waste has been reduced significantly before the discussion begins about effective recycling of the waste that is created. The Enviroparks proposal relies on a steady stream of waste to keep it in business – and a stream of mixed waste, some of which could and should be recycled rather than incinerated.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little.

The plant involves in the first instance sorting various waste categories and subsequently a series of processes including anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis and plasma gasification.

The suggested jobs benefit is 200 jobs – however the plan relies on ‘the high-energy user.’ (Page 7 Non-Technical Summary).

You may well ask who is this high-energy user? The plan (or more accurately the business plan) relies on the siting of an additional plant / factory nearby that uses high levels of electricity to minimise losses from transmission of electricity to the grid. The ‘high-energy user’ is unspecified through the documentation and one can only speculate as to what kind of potentially polluting business would join this plant on the Hirwaun Industrial Estate. There are two possibilities looking from the outside here. One is that the identity of a potential high-energy user is known – hence the accuracy of the jobs figures, but that the inclusion of such detail might deter the planning authorities from agreeing to a proposal that requires both a new polluting factory and the Enviroparks plant. Alternatively there are no identified high-energy users and therefore major questions emerge about the proposed jobs figures,

Of the technologies involved, anaerobic digestion is a proven technology, though, linked to my first point above, surely we should be encouraging people to compost organic waste in their own homes?

Pyrolysis, gasification and plasma are less proven technologies. Though they have been around for some time, they have not been viewed as commercially viable until now. They are classified as incineration according to the EU’s Waste Incineration Directive and therefore the Hirwaun plant will be an incinerator (albeit an advanced one).

The difficulty with assessing these technologies is that, as reported in an excellent Friends of the Earth briefing (September 09) on these technologies, the data on performance comes almost exclusively from companies seeking to build advanced incinerators.

I am particularly concerned about the mix of materials needed for such plants to operate effectively. Precisely those materials that should be recycled, e.g. plastic, paper and food waste, may be used as part of the incineration processes to secure efficiency, thus undermining genuine efforts at recycling and reduction.

Given the lack of large-scale commercial operations using plasma gasification and pyrolysis, we do not know the impact on emissions. We have data from the companies involved but no independently verifiable data.

The Enviroparks report itself states:
‘The overall risk from the emissions to air is considered to have a medium negative impact.’ (Page 16)

The Friends of the Earth briefing helpfully lists the likely emissions from such processes:
• acid gasses
• dioxins and furans
• nitrogen oxides
• sulphur dioxide
• particulates
• cadmium
• mercury
• lead
• hydrogen sulphide.

These emissions could all emerge in close proximity to the Penderyn reservoir – which provides water for the Cynon Valley!

I hope the above comments are enough to persuade people that we need to be very careful indeed about approving a plasma gasification and pyrolysis plant.

There are a few more points to be considered:
i) Is this plant commercially viable with maximum recycling of plastics, paper etc (and therefore potentially inefficient incineration)?
ii) Is this plant reliant on the high-energy user being located in close proximity? If so, why do we now know more about the second proposed development?
iii) And, more broadly, why has there been apparently no consideration to transporting the waste to the plant by rail rather than road? [The transport impact alone raises a major concern in my mind]
iv) Finally, if we are genuinely trying to develop the Beacons / Heads of the Valleys as a sustainable tourism location, which I believe we can do, how is a large incinerator visible for miles around going to help?


I have therefore a range of issues / problems with the Hirwaun Advanced Incinerator – the Enviroparks development. There may well be elements of the proposal that should be supported, but the package stands or falls as one in my view and, given the very real concerns, I cannot support the development as currently planned.