A video on YouTube shows Gloucestershire County Council Leader, Mark Hawthorne, declaring that the cabinet has approved their budget for the next financial year, with upbeat music in the background. In the next frame, he jubilantly announces, “It may be hard to believe, but all of this has helped fund our plans for next year!” The camera pans across the multi-million pound Energy from Waste facility, next to the M5.
The building most Gloucestershire residents have seen on their travels is a highly controversial, £633 million incinerator, which became fully operational in January 2020. The council signed a contract with Urbaser Balfour Beatty (UBB) to build and operate the waste facility. This contract will last for 25 years and the facility will accept up to 190,000 tonnes of waste each year.
So what is the facility’s main purpose? To be an alternative to landfill. To burn household rubbish, described as ‘left over after recycling and composting’ on its official webpage – at 850 degrees C. Describing a lot of science in basic terms, this energy from the combustion creates steam in a boiler, which is then ‘converted into electricity in the turbine.’ This electricity can then be sold by the council.
Gloucestershire County Council confirmed that the facility produces as much electricity as it was designed to, and that approximately 14.5MW of electricity is exported to the local electricity grid annually. They explained: “Currently we send approximately 130,000 tonnes per annum of the county’s household residual waste to the Gloucestershire Energy from Waste facility.”
The incinerator’s very important role is to create energy to generate income for the Council to use to fund other public services. “The sale of this energy will deliver a £15 million boost to the budget,” Mark Hawthorne says in the campaign video, “meaning, unlike many other councils who are struggling to balance the books, we haven’t had to make dramatic cuts to services you rely on each day.”
How does the council make money from selling their electricity? The council said that they are 'responsible for selling electricity generated by the Gloucestershire Energy from Waste facility. It is considered good practice to sell the electricity 12-24 months in advance to avoid short-term market fluctuations.' They further explained that the council make trading decisions with the Electricity Project Group to essentially review the market prices and decide the best time to sell the electricity.
The road to approval
It was a rather rocky road to the eventual approval of the incinerator. In 2012, plans were revealed to build the incinerator at a figure of £500 million.
But the scheme was delayed for three years.
In 2013, the council’s own planning committee rejected the proposals for the incinerator. Later that year, in 2013, there was a U-turn after the facility’s contractors, Urbaser Balfour Beatty, launched an appeal. Stroud District Council (SDC) later took on a legal challenge, submitting an application which would question the Secretary of State’s decision to grant permission for the incinerator. SDC failed to overturn the decision, and in 2015 Gloucestershire County Council voted to allow a developer to begin construction on the Energy from Waste facility.
Back in 2017, four years after the council awarded the 25-year contract for the incinerator to Urbaser Balfour Beatty, the Information Commissioner ruled some of the details of a previously redacted report from the Council must be revealed. A BBC report confirmed that the public would ‘learn of some financial aspects which the council said were commercially sensitive.’ It was reported by the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard that Gloucestershire County Council spent nearly £200,000 at the High Court ‘to block any attempt to reveal the details.’
It was only once the information was released in 2018, that locals were able to discover that the incinerator would cost at least £102 million more than expected, as well as showing that it would cost the council £112 per tonne to incinerate the waste.
Protests aplenty
At the helm of protests against the incinerator was, (and still is), a community-led group called Community R4C which wants to provide social, economic and environmental benefits for the county. They believe in ‘treating our waste as a valuable resource rather than burning or burying it.’ Backed by figures including Jeremy Irons and Kevin McCloud, they have worked extensively on ‘exposing’ what they describe as the ‘illegal’ and ‘very expensive’ contract to build the Javelin Park incinerator.
There was dispute over the plans for the incinerator early on. Protests in 2017 included people storming Shire Hall in Gloucester, the site of council offices, and demanding that work on the incinerator be stopped. The BBC reported at the time that there were about ’20 protestors’ and that this group had described their behaviour as ‘civil disobedience.’
In a more revealing protest, also in 2017, a naked lady rode her horse through the streets of Gloucester in a nod to Lady Godiva, to call for a stop to the incinerator plans.
A report from WRAP, a climate action NGO (non-governmental organisation) published a report in 2022 on the ‘gate fees’ (the amount charged by weight for waste received at a facility), and found the median to be £103 per tonne.
It was in 2019, when the Energy from Waste plant first began operation, that protestors gathered to stop lorries from making their first deliveries of waste to the site. The action group Extinction Rebellion prevented the vehicles from entering the site. An article from local news source Punchline reported that the group demanded that they ‘be allowed to inspect the lorries to ensure they are carrying nothing that can be recycled.’
In 2020, the members of Community R4C launched a High Court appeal over the awarding of the contract for the incinerator. They claimed that the contract was unlawfully given, and that it would create a ‘massive rise in costs to taxpayers’ and would breach procurement law. A BBC report at the time said that the County Council denied any suggestion of an unlawful contract and that ‘it ran a competitive process within the law.’
The legal battle couldn’t proceed though. Gloucestershire Live reported that the High Court ruled CR4C was ‘not qualified to bid for the contract.’
However, in 2021, independent auditors wouldn’t say if the issuing of the waste contract for Javelin Park was lawful or not.
Gloucestershire County Council were approached for comment and stated: ‘The procurement of the Council’s residual waste contract followed the Procurement Regulations and the Council’s governance, meaning that prior to commencing the procurement and at each stage of the procurement process, approval (in public) was sought by Cabinet to progress.
Green…or not?
In the new budget campaign video, Council Leader Mark Hawthorne says, “Our Energy from Waste Plant stops Gloucestershire’s rubbish going to landfill, and instead turns it into green energy.”
A lot of the protests against the Javelin Park incinerator are related to the facility’s potential environmental impacts, and some have claimed the council to be ‘greenwashing.’
The United Nations define greenwashing as, ‘misleading the public to believe that a company, or other entity, is doing more to protect the environment than it is.’ The council have been approached for comment.
Shlomo Dowen, the National Coordinator of the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network (UKWIN), said: ‘There are many reasons why people oppose incineration, including because incineration harms recycling, exacerbates climate change, and is a barrier to the circular economy. Of course, it is also the case that incinerators harm air quality and have proven to be bad neighbours.’
During public questions to the Gloucestershire County Council cabinet in late January 2024, Green Party councillor Chris McFarling posed questions to Councillor Lynden Stowe. He asked what proof there was “to promote incinerators as generators of ‘green’, ‘renewable’, or ‘low carbon” energy, when “evidence from monitoring shows that the UK’s 50+ incinerators emitted more than seven million tonnes of fossil-based carbon dioxide in 2023.”
Stowe responded, “Approximately 50% of the energy recovered at the Energy from Waste Facility can be called renewable because of the organic/biogenic composition of waste feedstock.” After the event, Tom Jarman, co-founder of Community R4C argued, ‘No, this is incorrect, [and is] based on faulty data…not actual waste composition data. Nor from current (correct) analysis of the proportion of electricity produced by burning of biogenic material.’ He continued, ‘Analysis from CR4C shows that 65% of the power comes from burning plastic, which is a fossil fuel. So, the incinerator mostly makes electricity from burning a fossil fuel, plastic, and this is significantly worse in CO2 terms than, say, a coal-fired power station.’
Gloucestershire County Council responded to confirm that the energy can be called ‘renewable’: ‘Urbaser, the Council’s contractor, who operates the plant, sends waste composition data to Ofgem, in the format and methodology approved by them. Ofgem then confirms the proportion of biogenic content of waste entering the facility.’
They added: ‘A countrywide waste composition study was undertaken in 2019, which showed that within the household residual waste (the materials that residents do not reuse or recycle), circa 16% was plastic. Since then, companies have been lightweighting their products and more shops accept plastic packaging to recycle.’
The incinerator was designed to take the county’s non-recyclable waste away from landfill. Jarman explained: ‘The incinerator takes commercial waste. Waste paper and card should go for recycling, however there is a perverse incentive to burn it in the incinerator because this increases the biogenic proportion.’ GCC has been approached for comment.
Shlomo Dowen of UKWIN added: ‘Studies indicate that most of what is currently in the ‘residual’ waste stream is readily recyclable, meaning a significant proportion of what is currently incinerated could have been recycled or composted.
‘For example, a DEFRA report published in August 2020 stated that: “Of total residual waste from household sources in England in 2017, an estimated 53% could be categorised as readily recyclable, and 27% as potentially recyclable.”
Jarman also said: ‘The electricity generated by the incinerator is not green, despite the claims. Over 65% of the energy comes from burning plastic – a fossil fuel – at very low efficiency.’ He believes that wind turbines would have been a greener source of energy as a use of the Council’s money.
Shlomo Dowen agreed: ‘Alternatives to incineration are less costly, more flexible, quicker to implement and better for the environment. Rather than incinerating waste, local authorities should focus on maximising re-use and recycling, alongside providing a weekly separate food waste collection for treatment.’
The Environment Agency is responsible for overseeing the emissions levels of the incinerator and setting limit levels, in the facility’s Environmental Permit. There are maximum levels for gases including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide.
During the course of the facility’s life so far, analysis shows the average daily emissions have not surpassed the permissible levels according to the Environmental Permit.
Urbaser, who operate the Energy from Waste facility, have said on their website that, ‘The Facility’s efficient technology protects the environment by delivering low emissions, energy and recyclate recovery, and diversion of waste from landfill.
‘It is reliable, established, and robust. We demonstrate this through regular reporting to the EA (Environment Agency) of our performance.’
A 2020 press release from Gloucestershire County Council declared that the council had cut its net corporate CO2 emissions by 97% since 2006/2007, according to its first annual climate change report. The council signed up to a UK100 pledge, which meant that the target for Gloucestershire to become a carbon-neutral county would be 2045.
According to the council, these figures included the ‘carbon saving from green electricity’ generated by the Javelin Park incinerator.
The latest on the incinerator
On the 21st February 2024, Gloucestershire County Council Leader Mark Hawthorne appeared on BBC Radio Gloucestershire to discuss the new council budget fix and tax figures. He confirmed that, thanks to the incinerator at Javelin Park, the council would have an extra £15 million coming in, “increasing the amount we’re able to deliver and spend to local residents.”
On the programme, Tom Jarman of Community R4C said, “It would be much cheaper to pre-sort waste, and to recycle waste… our incinerator is the most expensive in the country.”
Jarman also added that it would be important to change the incinerator contract, so that it “doesn’t incentivise sending waste there” but instead “incentivises recycling and the reduction of waste.”
In response, Mark Hawthorne said, “Tom’s wrong. Tom was wrong ten years ago when he wanted us to cancel the contract for the cost of £100 million, which would have bankrupted the council, and Tom’s wrong today, because this is an Energy from Waste plant which is taking that residual waste.
“And let’s be really clear about this, Gloucestershire does a fantastic job of recycling.” He added, “This is a fantastic asset to the county, and it’s delivering money into frontline services…it’s producing dividends day in, day out for Gloucestershire residents.”
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