Campaigners of the Trafford-based Breathe Clean Air Group (BCAG) have challenged the Environment Agency (EA) over the legality of its decision to grant an environmental permit to Peel Energy’s Barton Renewable Energy Plant (BREP) in Davyhulme, Manchester.

Group Chairman of the BCAG, Pete Kilvert has now written to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, claiming that the EA had ‘failed to take notice of crucial information’ submitted by the group regarding the air pollution that will be produced by the biomass combustion plant and had thus ‘clearly flouted the law’.

The Breathe Clean Air Group says that the EA’s October 2012 permit decision had found the most affected residential receptor in terms of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was Tindall Street, when model data supplied by Peel Energy showed that ground concentrations of NO2 were higher at Wilfred Street.

Writing in the letter, Kilvert said: ‘The Environmental Agency [sic] failed to take notice of crucial information from the Breathe Clean Air Group, who pointed out that the most affected residential receptor (for NO2) was not Tindall Street, but indeed Wilfred Street. The air pollution modelling produced by the Appellants, Peel Energy, clearly shows that Wilfred Street is within the 0.8 miligrammes (mg) per metres squared (m3) band… of the NO2 EU EQS (Nitrogen Dioxide EU Environmental Quality Standards), and higher than Tindall Street.’

The letter goes on to argue that as a diffusion tube measuring NO2 at Liverpool Road (a similar distance from the M60 Motorway as Wilfred Street) is currently averaging a reading of ‘above 60 mg/m3, i.e. 50 per cent more than the EU maximum’, it can be concluded that ‘NO2 air quality standard is already being breached on Wilfred Street without the additional contribution from BREP’.

‘The Environment Agency has clearly flouted the law and I urge you to take this up with higher authorities’, the letter concludes.

Concern over ‘perceived impact on public health’

BREP is still awaiting planning permission after a public inquiry was held in November last year following the calling in of the plans by Eric Pickles. The plans were called in after Peel Energy appealed over Trafford Council’s unanimous decision to refuse planning permission to the wood burning plant over “genuine and significant public concern over the perceived impact on public health”.

However, writing in a report submitted to Trafford Planning Authority in March 2011, toxicologist Professor James Bridges, said that “the risks to health of the local population from a modern plant operating to the EU regulatory emission limits will, at the very most, be very minor”. He also maintained that some claims previously made by the BCAG “seriously misrepresent current scientific opinion on the potential air quality and health impacts of biomass plants and other waste-to-energy/incinerator plants”.

“As a consequence they give a very misleading impression of the possible risks to the local population and are likely to cause serious and unnecessary concern amongst local residents and their representatives towards Peel Energy’s Barton Renewable Energy Project”, he added.

Peel Energy have further stated that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said that the Barton Renewable Energy Plant proposal “does not present any obvious cause for concern in regards to a significant health risk to local receptors from emissions, providing it is well managed and maintained”.

Effects on air quality, health, regeneration and sustainability

As part the inquiry, inspector David Richards will weigh up the effect of the proposed development on air quality, the perception of impact on human health, the effect on the continuing regeneration of the area and whether the proposal would be sustainable before recommending a course of action to Pickles.

Kilvert has now urged Pickles, who will make the final decision about the Davyhulme biomass incinerator ‘by mid May’, to not allow it to be built.

Referring to his belief that the Peel Group's plans for a 'massive storage facility' in Liverpool could import biomass pellets from North and South America, which in turn could be transported to the Davyhulme plant (against the company's original statement that all biomass for the Manchester plant would be 'sourced in north west England'), Kilvert added in a subsequent letter to Pickles: 'I may be jumping the gun here, but I feel you should investigate the double-dealing of the Peel Group, before issuing planning permission.'

The campaign group has also planned to visit Parliament next month to stress to MPs the dangers of burning biomass. “We are not opposed to alternative energy”, said Mr Kilvert, “but biomass should not be used as it adds to global warming and has serious health impacts.”

This action comes just months after a November 2012 report published by the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace found that biomass plants that burn trees are actually worse for the environment than coal plants, with the burning of typical conifer trees resulting in 49 per cent more emissions than coal; the groups advocated the building of small-scale biomass plants with sustainable feed stocks, such as wood waste. Peel Energy claims it plans to burn ‘differing types’ of biomass at the BREP, including recycled wood, energy crops, agricultural residues and virgin timbers.

Read more about Peel Energy’s BREP plans.