P Gwyrdd PFI Scam devised by Pro-Incinerator officers

PROSIECT GWYRDD SHORT-LIST
P Gwyrdd is a scam devised by pro-incinerator officers in S-E Wales to pretend to be seeking a “technology neutral” solution to municipal waste.

•  they brought in Partnerships UK as financial consultants – whose remit is promoting PFI. Because PFI has a bad press and was caught in the credit crunch, it has been re-badged as PBFOM.
•  they devised their reference project as a single incinerator, requiring a 25-30 year-long contract and high waste volumes, so the Councils are going slow on recycling (65% by 2025 though other authorities are already reaching or surpassing 70%)
•  they pretend all the incinerator grate-ash can be re-used as aggregate, those elsewhere it's found to be toxic material and less than half is re-used.
• WAG promised them 25% subsidy on the gate fee to the incinerator company. WAG again claims to be technology neutral, but disclosed in the media that energy-recovery from waste is “best” see below
•  WAG claimed it wanted high energy efficiency, 60% or more, using all the waste heat. But their subsidy is promised irrespective of the heat-use, implying their claim is dishonest.
•  The short-list of 4 companies announced by 'scam' Gwyrdd in December contained only large single incinerator projects, with little if any use of heat (the Veolia plan would supply a small fraction for injdustrial purposes to Solutia).

More details are in the briefing by R Walters member of Abergavenny & Crickhowell FOE (Friends of the Earth) [link]

When applied to incinerators, "energy from waste" is a dangerous euphemism. Far from being a sensible, environmentally friendly solution to the enormous amount of waste created in Wales, incineration is a nasty quick fix to deal with our ever-growing waste mountain.
The news that a 400m waste plant planned for Wales Jan 04 2011 to build one of the UK’s largest waste incineration plants on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil is shocking.
This is an Energy from waste CON.
WAG under pressure to reduce landfill are opting for incineration of waste under the pretext that they can make electricity from the process! We know the electricity from one of these large incinerators is pretty small, compared with normal power stations (several 100MW up to Aberthaw’s 1450MW) and produces toxic ash and air pollution. They set no requirement on energy efficiency, despite Welsh strategy on 60% minimum.
Claims that significant energy could generated from waste are wrong - even Covanta's huge Merthyr proposal would generate a tiny 60MW compared with Aberthaw's 1450 MW.
WAGs and Cardiff Councils are Re-branding incineration as a means of recovery rather than waste disposal to create the impression that burning our rubbish is environmentally-friendly, which it clearly is not.