Biggest Energy from Waste Plant Receives Permit

The £300 million facility at Picow Farm, Weston Point, near Runcorn in Cheshire, would generate 100MW of electricity as well as 360MW of heat energy through a combined heat and power system.

The energy is to be used in the INEOS chemical factory - one of the largest single consumers of energy in the UK, power consumption at the Runcorn site is the same as the city of Liverpool.

Using 750,000 to 850,000 tonnes of fuel each year made from municipal waste, the plant looks set to be the major component in the UK's largest waste management contract, a £4 billion Private Finance Initiative project in Manchester. The PFI project is being run by waste firm Viridor and construction firm Laing.

As well as taking in waste collected from Manchester homes, the facility potentially use waste from Merseyside, Halton, and Warrington, and Ineos is also part of a consortium bidding for a £1 billion PFI waste contract for Cheshire.

Announcing approval for the Picow Farm plant, the energy minister said it would help prevent waste being sent to landfill, but acknowledged there had been local concerns about the impact of the plant on public health.

Mr Wicks said: "While acknowledging that this proposal was controversial locally, this approval takes into account the concerns that were raised. The key concern of impact on public health will be properly addressed through planning conditions at the construction stage and when the station is operational, through the environmental permitting regime regulated by the Environment Agency."

Ineos has been awaiting a planning decision on the Pickow Farm plant since January 2007. According to NewEnergyFocus, hopes are that the facility could be operational in 2011.

When built, the INEOS energy-from-waste plant would be larger than the 55MW Edmonton facility in North London, currently Britain's biggest waste-burning power plant. It will also be larger than the 66MW Belvedere incinerator being built in South-East London, which was seen as so large it took 16 years to win planning permission.

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