Cardiff council coverup

Cardiff council have a briefing cover up for Cardiff Cllrs on Prosiect Gwyrdd which is as you know 5 South wales councils working with the welsh assembly to build incinerators. Cllr Stevens Con dem is chair of the board with 2 Plaid 2 ConDems and 6 Tories and he refuses to allow environmentalists from FOE or southwales WIN to give the cllrs the other side of the story.
The business case was made for this before the credit crunch - before carbon taxes were a reality - before recycling rates soared - before PFI projects were acknowledged to be bad value for money. 
Yet Cllr Stevens from Cardiff ignores all that to convince the Cardiff Counil to ignore all these risks and storm ahead recklessly to squander public money.
They refuse to admit its PFI hiding behind different acronyms

 Has this meeting been fixed between officers, who have an interest in defending their bad decisions?   

Is it not up to Cardiff Cllrs who they choose to hear at a Briefing in County Hall, and whether it should be held in private?

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.

WAG Greenwash

Desperately needed to draw attention to the really bad anti environment policies being rolled out by WAG despite the grand greenwash...

The WAG heritage minister is happy for Cardiff libdems/Plaid Cymru to build a new bridge £1.4million and a ROAD into listed city centre for articulated lorries!!!

The WAG are promoting Project 'GREEN'!!! which is promoting incineration! Plus ignoring other better options.

ask the WAG why incinerator residues not counted in the recycling/composting indicator?

Couldn't make it up! What are they thinking of?

UKWin response to Wales waste Strategy is very concerned about the apparent promotion of incineration.. in project 'green' P Gwyrdd


WAG Approval of the business case and subsidy for Prosiect Gwyrdd, 27 Jan. 2009 for next generation energy-from-waste plant in south Wales

The Minister depicted Prosiect Gwyrdd as "producing much needed energy" that would "use waste in the best possible way", despite the consortium claiming their Business case for procuring a ‘solution’ for residual waste is technology-neutral (www.prosiectgwyrdd.gov.uk)

Keeping incineration on the table seriously risks undermining targets for recycling and waste reduction.


Gordon James, director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said:

While the Assembly Government’s target of achieving 70% recycling by 2025 is a step in the right direction, we have to be more ambitious. Parts of Europe, such as Flanders and Germany, are already achieving this rate, so we believe we should be aiming for 70% recycling by 2015 and 80% by 2020.

We also want to see a much greater emphasis on waste reduction. Wales could become a zero waste nation, in which residual waste has been eliminated by 2030 rather than the proposed target of 2050. This is far too long to wait given the current environmental problems we face. Bold and urgent action is necessary now.

The Assembly Government’s own consultants have stated that it is fundamental that recycling becomes an option for waste management only after reduction and reuse. Without significant waste reduction, even 70% recycling by 2025 would fail to meet the Assembly Government’s own target to reduce Wales’ ‘ecological footprint’ to a fair 1.88 global hectares per person.

NOTE UK WIN's response to the Welsh Waste Strategy emphasises that
the incineration brigadiers are wrongly ignoring the value of biogas.

As does The Ecologist - 7 Aug 09 (full article requires sub.)

Councils accused of ignoring biogas - by David Strahan

Throughout the UK Councils are making a panicked rush into PFI incinerator contracts which will run 25 years, prove problematic, very expensive to sustain and more costly to terminate.

In fact, current British targets, subsidies, and procurement rules are driving councils and their private sector waste contractors towards a range of far less energy efficient options such as incineration, and some that recover no energy at all, such as industrial composting. The government, which is a recent convert to biogas, plans to introduce new incentives in 2011, but by then it may be too late. To avoid swingeing fines under the EU directive, councils are rushing to seal PFI deals with waste disposal contractors that could effectively lock in their choices for a quarter of a century. According to Johnny Johnston, sustainable gas manager for National Grid, 'There is a concern that valuable waste streams for generating biogas may be lost'.

Ex Biffa Waste Director, Peter Jones, now waste advisor to Boris Johnson, says -

As glacial as the development of British waste policy may be, the direction of travel is clear, and organic waste is going to become a valuable commodity that local authorities will be able to sell, not pay to be taken away. Any council signing an incinerator contract today that ties it into rising fees for 25 years would be 'crazy'.

The problem is, that may be exactly what many are about to do.
David Strahan is a journalist specialising in energy issues,
and author of 'The Last Oil Shock'

Whos paying for Viridor Cardiff Incinerator Road Berman?

An interesting article from the Guardian...

Taxpayer bails out Europe's biggest waste-to-energy scheme

in Manchester The government has had to step in to ensure

the £635m project can be built after banks failed to lend enough

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/08/utilities-pfi