The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, has called in the planning application for Teal Energy’s energy recovery facility in Swanscombe, Kent, over its potential impact on ‘wider policy initiatives in the area’.

The facility, which is being proposed for development on unoccupied land in Manor Way Business Park in Swanscombe, would utilise pyrolysis and gasification to treat up to 250,000 tonnes of biomass and residual waste from the commercial and industrial sector. These would reportedly produce 20 megawatts of electricity – enough to power around 45,000 homes.

In September, Kent County Council’s Planning Applications Committee recommended that the council should grant permission for the plant to be built (subject to a legal agreement), but just days later received a letter from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) directing the council not to grant permission to the facility without ‘specific authorisation’.

Inquiry to look at impact on government-supported developments

Following this, last week DCLG wrote to the council again outlining that the Secretary of State Eric Pickles had decided to call in the application for public inquiry. It states that ‘the matters which he particularly wished to be informed about for the purposes of his consideration of the application are the likely implications of the proposed development on the wider policy initiatives in the area; and any other matters the Inspector finds relevant’.

These ‘wider policy initiatives’ include nearby government-supported developments such as:

• Ebbsfleet Garden City, a housing development of 15,000 homes incorporating large swathes of green land, which the government has provided £200 million of infrastructure funding to; and
• Paramount Park, a £2-billion theme park that Pickles has deemed a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP).

The letter concludes: ‘[T]he Secretary of State hereby directs the Council not to grant planning permission, without specific authorisation, for any development which is the same kind as that which is the subject of the application…on any land which forms part of, or includes, the site to which the applications relates until the Secretary of State has issued his decision on this application.’

The move has been welcomed by local politician Gareth Johnson, Member of Parliament for Dartford, who said: “I welcome the decision to call this matter in and I maintain that Kent County Council’s decision to grant planning permission was wrong.

“I hope ultimately that Kent County Council’s decision is overturned and consequently the theme park can go ahead and this potential barrier will be removed.”

Council involvement 'remains unclear'

Kent County Council has now said that its 'future involvement remains unclear at this moment' as the government expects to establish a development corporation for Ebbsfleet Garden City next year (Ebbsfleet Development Corporation (EDC)), which would incorporate a large part of Dartford and Gravesham.

It highlighted that, if established, planning powers for the purposes of determining current and future planning applications for the area, including the Manor Way Industrial site within which the Teal Energy application site is located, would transfer to the EDC.

Facility may not reach ‘recovery’ status

As well as concerns over its impact on nearby developments, the plant’s classification as a recovery plant has also been called into question.

Although it is expected that the facility will be a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, as of December 2013 there were no contracts in existence between Teal Energy and potential heat consumers.

Notably, planning documentation outlines that if the plant does not develop its heat potential, the facility would achieve an energy-efficiency ratio of 0.63 – falling under the European Commission’s ‘R1 status’ limit (0.65) for energy recover plants. As such, it would be considered a ‘disposal’ rather than a recovery facility. Only if the heat side of the plant were to be exploited would the facility fall under the policy requirement of being considered a recovery plant.

Shlomo Dowen, National Coordinator of the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network (UKWIN), said: "UKWIN requested that the application be called in, and naturally we are pleased that the Secretary of State has agreed to do so.

“Like many councils, the local authority mistakenly assumed that just because the facility could potentially recover some energy that meant it was 'recovery' under the waste hierarchy. In fact, incinerators are disposal by default and there are certain requirements that must be met before they can be considered to be ‘recovery’…Even if [this facility] worked as anticipated it appears that, due to the inefficiency of the facility and the lack of heat customers, the plant would never operate as anything other than disposal, at the very bottom of the waste hierarchy.

“What we need to be seeing is capacity at the top of the hierarchy, not even more residual waste treatment overcapacity.”

‘No new energy recovery plants meet that criteria’

Speaking to Resource, Teal Energy’s Director, Paul Sandler, argued that currently, there are no new energy recovery facilities that meet this benchmark.

He said: “We still have seven years to provide a heat network, but, to be quite frank, I don't think there are any other new energy recovery plants that meet that criteria. [The Environment Agency has identified that there are currently nine facilites in England that have achieved R1 status, although some of these are not yet operational.]

“The main difficulty for us is that without a heat client and infrastructure in place we can’t demonstrate that we can meet the energy-ratio requirement. I couldn’t see the residents of the Swanscombe being very impressed if I was to start ripping up every road in the area to lay steam pipes.”

Sandler added that the company had suggested to DCLG that it could provide the proposed Ebbsfleet development with all its power and heat “which would take the facility into and over the correct energy-efficiency target” and assured government that there would be no conflict between the recovery centre and the proposed developments, but had not had any feedback.

He said: “The difficulty that we have in representing ourselves in a position like this is that we don’t have any information – the main objector is the government themselves and they haven’t provided us with any information on how we can move forward.

“We’re exceptionally disappointed and honestly, can’t see a real justification for calling in the plans.”

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