Melbourne’s western suburbs, which have long been blighted by stinking rubbish tips, could be the site of a waste to energy plant that would convert household waste into enough electricity to power up to 20,000 houses.
The $100 million plant, proposed for Laverton North, would take up to 200,000 tonnes a year of residual household waste which is currently sent to landfill. This is the equivalent of household waste from three to four councils.
Using a process known as gasification the waste would be heated at a very high temperature where air is limited to ensure it doesn’t burn. The waste is converted into a gas that is then used to heat water into steam and drive a turbine to produce electricity.
Thermal waste to energy technologies such as gasification and incineration – where rubbish is burned – are common methods of rubbish disposal in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
However Australia has been slow to embrace them, in part due to the cheap cost of landfill.
While some believe the plants have a role to play in disposing of residual waste, others contend they cannibalise recycling and discourage people from reducing their waste.
However increasing awareness of the need to divert waste from landfill and China’s ban on importing recyclable materials has led to Australia’s environment ministers agreeing to explore waste to energy as part of the solution to the waste crisis.
“This commitment recognises energy from waste is part of the waste hierarchy and prioritises reduction, reuse and recycling strategies over energy recovery,” Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price told The Saturday Age.
Australian Paper has also proposed a waste to energy plant in the Latrobe Valley, which is being considered by Environment Protection Authority Victoria.
The giant $600 million incinerator would produce 225 megawatts of electricity to power the mill and sell energy back into the grid.
A health impact assessment, prepared by Environmental Risk Sciences (EnRisks), said the Australian Paper project was associated with some benefits to the community, particularly in relation to employment.
“Where negative impacts have been identified, these are considered to be negligible in terms of community health,” it said.
Ian Guss, the director of Recovered Energy Australia, said he was proposing to build the gasification plant, which would be privately funded, in industrial two zoned land in Laverton North.
He hoped it would be operating by 2021.
The application is being considered by EPA Victoria and Wyndham City Council.
Mr Guss said filters inside the plant would clean up the gases to exceed the strict air emissions and environmental criteria of the EPA.
The byproducts of the process would be slag, which can be used in roads, and a small amount of potentially hazardous fly ash, which would go to an appropriate landfill.
Mr Guss stressed the plant would only take residual waste found in non-recyclable household bins that would otherwise end up in landfill.
“There is no suggestion we want to undermine recycling, we feel this augments it,” Mr Guss said.
“It doesn’t have to be a big hungry beast at our scale. It is a local solution for a local problem.”
More than half of all metropolitan Melbourne’s landfill is dumped in massive tips at Werribee and Ravenhall.
Western Region Environment Centre director Harry van Moorst, who opposed the expansion of the Werribee dump, said reducing waste and recycling should be the two priorities of waste management.
However he said waste-to energy was significantly better than landfill and he supported the gasification plant being built in the industrial zone at Laverton North.
“It is really just another type of factory – there is a lot of manufacturing that would be far more problematic and risky,” Mr van Moorst said. “I think there will be some concern because of the risk of emissions but studies would suggest emissions can be pretty well controlled.”
Last year Western Metropolitan MP Cesar Melhem undertook consultation on the opportunity for waste to energy in Melbourne’s west.
“People want to see an end to landfill – the odour, rubbish flying all over the place. Houses are encroaching on landfill,” he said.
His consultation found there was broad support for waste to energy in Melbourne, although the community had concerns about how the technology worked, what risks it might lead to and how hazardous byproducts such as fly ash would be handled.
Mr Melhem said that in this day and age anything that created methane, such as organic and food waste, should be banned from landfill.
“I think waste to energy is an absolutely great way to go about handling residual waste into the future,” he said.
“All the experts are telling me that if you use the European standards, emissions are lower than landfill and we can generate electricity.”
The Victorian government was due to release a policy on waste to energy earlier this year but The Age understands it has been shelved until after the election,
Waste pollution group The Boomerang Alliance does not believe thermal waste to energy plants should play any role in the future management of waste.
“You can’t say waste to energy will be safe, with no dangerous emissions entirely,” said Boomerang Alliance convenor Jeff Angel. “They also produce hazardous residue which still has to be landfilled and is quite dangerous in itself.”
He said European countries were moving away from waste-to-energy plants towards a circular economy, where waste was reused again and again.
However Waste Management Association of Australia chief executive officer Gayle Sloan said waste to energy had a role to play within the waste management hierarchy, and was a step above landfill.
“If we can recover energy from resources rather than throwing rubbish into landfill, which only creates methane and leachate, that is definitely a far more positive outcome,” she said.
“But our goal has always got to be looking at designing out waste in product choices and creating a circular economy.”
