Agenda item

Considered – Report of the Corporate Director – Environment with an update on Allerton Waste Recovery Park (AWRP) contractual performance since services commenced in 2018 and options for future decarbonisation.

Some of the key points highlighted in the report and presentation are as summarised below:

·       AWRP has been operational since 1 March 2018 and consists of a Mechanical Treatment (MT) plant, an Anaerobic Digester (AD) and Energy from Waste (EfW) facility to receive and treat residual waste from across York and North Yorkshire. Offices and a visitor centre is also on site. The facility can process up to 320,000 tonnes of waste per annum as per the planning permission.

At the end of 2022, HMT published draft legislation on the Electricity Generator Levy relating to a tax on exceptional profits. The EfW sector has been included as an industry that would be in scope.

·         Following a consultation exercise in March 2022, on 3 July 2023, the UK Government released a consultation response which looks to include Energy from Waste facilities in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) from 2028.  It is proposed there will be a 2 year lead in period from 2026.  Further consultation is expected later in 2023.

·         The annual contract target is to recycle or compost a minimum of 5% of Contract Waste and to divert a minimum of 70% Contract Waste away from landfill.

·         The diversion of contract waste from landfill in 2022-23 was 92.64%. AWRP has performed well since services commenced and improved landfill diversion performance year on year. Currently two planned maintenance outages take place each year but AWRP is looking to move to annual maintenance shutdowns from 2025.

·         2022-23 recycling performance is the best since service commencement, although at 2.02% is still short of the 5% authority requirements. It is felt that Covid-19 and the energy crisis have resulted in difficult market conditions.

·         The recycling/composting performance for NYC for 2022-23 was 43.6% which is slightly above the mean derived from 26 other Waste Disposal Authorities.

·         Since operations commenced, AWRP has been operating just below forecast levels by circa 400 tonnes by working to ensure maximising inputs. Thalia/Yorwaste are working to secure more treatment capacity rather than sending to landfill when AWRP is not available.

·         Incineration of waste emits 25 times less greenhouse gasses than landfill, however as with a number of other industrial processes, does emit CO2 when treating waste. Since operations commenced, AWRP has treated over 1.5m tonnes of waste and saved over 330,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

·         The waste team undertook a soft market testing exercise at the end of 2022 and had a number of responses from companies interested in responding to a tender to produce a feasibility study looking at options to decarbonise AWRP in the future.

Following this, comments and questions raised by the committee included:

·       How long do the scheduled closedown periods at Allerton Waste Recovery Park last and what happens to the waste delivered to the site during this period?

·       What arrangements are in place with other local authorities for processing waste disposal on their behalf at AWRP?

·       Is there expected to be a requirement to recycle more plastics in the future?

·       Will the separate food waste collection form part of the harmonisation process for waste collection and disposal?

·       Is the AWRP site receptive to respond to future advances in technology given the very quick pace of change in this area.

·       What opportunities are there to further influence public behaviour around improving the recycling rate in future years?

·       What are the next steps for the options to decarbonise AWRP in the future?

·       There was an appetite for a risk profile to be included with the future annual reports

Resolved -

That the contents of the report be noted.