Proposed Waste Incineration Plant (Loganswell)
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S3M-7759, in the name of Jackson Carlaw, on the proposed waste incineration plant at Loganswell. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament expresses its concern in respect of the proposal to establish a waste incineration plant at Loganswell near Newton Mearns in Eastwood covering some 29 hectares and which is anticipated to burn some 1.5 million tonnes of raw waste a year, a proposal which would arguably turn Eastwood into the ashtray of the west of Scotland; further notes the evidence of Duncan McLaren of Friends of the Earth Scotland who advised the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee on 23 November 2010 that it “would be insane to build Europe’s largest incinerator in East Renfrewshire”; believes that further consideration of this project is needed, and expresses its support for the wider local community, which it considers is resolutely opposed to this proposed development.
18:05
As someone who suggested a few months ago that Parliament should sit a bit longer, it is only appropriate that this members’ business debate should start at 6 o’clock rather than at 5 o’clock.
It is a little over a year since I, along with other people in the community, first got wind of the possibility of a major waste incineration plant being built in the west of Scotland, at Newton Mearns in East Renfrewshire. At that time, the suggestion of such a plant was dismissed as scaremongering, yet it became apparent within a few weeks that plans existed and, in fact, were far worse than anything we had anticipated.
What is being proposed for Newton Mearns—a quiet, leafy, residential suburb—takes us nearer the world of “Quatermass” and the movie sets of James Bond. We are being presented with a hellish vision: an unsolicited application for the largest waste incineration plant in Europe, which will be built on green-belt land, be bigger than the 18-hole golf course that will sit beside it and will have more than a dozen chimneys, each as high as 400ft. The golf course makes it sound quite attractive, but the building will be 1 million square feet in size, with a multistorey car park, a visitor centre—haud me back—and two heavy goods vehicle lorry parks. It will be open 24 hours a day and will process 1.5 million tonnes of waste annually. To put that into some sort of perspective, East Renfrewshire will generate 31,000 tonnes of those 1.5 million tonnes.
The developers, in their dazzling, shiny presentation, risibly call the project a “Lifetime Recycling Village”, conjuring up images of a Disney-style retraining and holiday camp for pensioners—or worse. In fact, one 90-year-old local community activist said to me, “Jackson, dinnae tell me—is this where they’re gonna put me when my time’s up?” It does rather sound as if that is its purpose.
This is East Renfrewshire, which is Europe’s largest suburb. There is no history of an industrial tradition in Eastwood or Newton Mearns, and the area has one of the largest elderly communities in Scotland. It is true, as the developers said to me, that a number of jobs will be created. In fact, they light-heartedly offered my mother, who will soon turn 80, a job in the 24-hour canteen if she would like it.
In the literature that the developers have produced in presenting the project, Newton Mearns has regressed to its 1926 boundaries, as it is shown stopping somewhere just north of Clarkston rather than advancing nearer the project. That is all designed to suggest a smaller project than is being proposed. It is not a Disney-style retraining camp. Let us cut to the chase: it is a massive industrial incinerator on a scale unseen anywhere else in the United Kingdom or Europe.
I get lost in the science of this: biomass, anaerobic digestion, ball mill technology, gasification and plasma vitrification. To the ordinary individual, that is all science fiction, but a colleague of mine is visiting a plasma vitrification plant today in Italy to see the process at work. The key point is that the technology is not available to be demonstrated in the UK; it does not operate successfully anywhere in our country.
The developers, in their critique of my motion, have said that it is not an incinerator. When is an incinerator an incinerator? LRV’s chief development officer, Willy Findlater, said in a presentation to East Renfrewshire councillors last week that 900,000 tonnes of waste will be incinerated. I would have thought that if someone is incinerating something, they are probably incinerating it in an incinerator. The European Union defines the gasification process that is at play as incineration, although one of the LRV management team helpfully told us that there are many different ways to label things. Indeed, but we will stick with the official EU description, which is incineration.
We are told that the project will create thousands of jobs, but the figures move from one week to the next. At last week’s presentations to the council and the public, we were told that 3,000 construction jobs will be created. However, in today’s briefing for MSPs, the number has become 4,000, which is a great increase in just a week. We were also told that hundreds of jobs will be created on-site, but the fact is that many of them will displace existing jobs in local plants that deal with waste around the west of Scotland. We were told that 1,000 permanent positions will be created, but that number dropped to 328 in last week’s presentation to the local community and has gone back up to 700 in today’s presentation to MSPs. This is just fantasy. From one day to the next, the facts change.
We are told that it will be a power station, which is why the minister will have an opportunity to consider whether she wishes to approve it. It will generate 96MW of power, 56MW of which will be available to the national grid. Interestingly, however, there is no connection to the national grid, so the developers have said that they will connect this power to the Whitelee wind farm, which, sitting just to the south of Newton Mearns, also happens to be the largest in Europe. When asked how that will be done, they say, “Well, we’ll probably erect pylons.” How many pylons? What size will they be? When will they be erected? Alternatively—those who are involved in the Beauly to Denny power line should wait until they hear this—the power might be transmitted by cables buried underground. Aye right—we have heard that one before. We have been told that if that does not work, the power will be used to serve an industrial village next door to the plant. What industrial village next door to the plant on green-belt land? The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is concerned that the project will simply vent the heat that it generates into the atmosphere.
I seek ministers’ assurance on one particular point. The developers are putting it about in the community, with a nod and a wink, that they have received the official nod from Scotland Office officials that the project will proceed.
There is also the issue of the number of trucks that will be required to service the development. Let me do the maths. Thirty-two-tonne trucks are capable of delivering 22 tonnes of waste when full. Shifting 1.5 million tonnes of waste in 365 days would require 68,182 trucks making 136,364 movements. That is 374 a day, 16 an hour or one every 3.45 minutes. In the time that I have been speaking, two of those trucks would have driven through the chamber. That is before we consider the movements of staff and the visitors to the project.
I am not here to grandstand, showboat or join a bandwagon. I did not choose the timing of this project. It sits next to the Brother Loch, which is a sentimental place for me. My grandparents fished there—they settled in the community 100 years ago—and I was brought up there. Those who know me know that I am not the sort of person who volunteers to lie down in front of bulldozers or mount that sort of protest, but I will in this case. This project, with its chimneys venting invisible clouds of mushroom residue into the atmosphere, is absolutely inconsistent with Government policy.
In 2009, the national health service, SEPA and Health Protection Scotland said that the science of incineration is inconsistent and inconclusive. The project might well be professionally presented and well intentioned but, if it goes ahead, it will be a descent into hell for the Eastwood community.
18:13
I congratulate Jackson Carlaw on securing this debate.
When the proposal was first suggested, I did not immediately oppose it. Instead, I took the time to look at the material and the evidence and to speak to local residents and, of course, the developers. However, after doing that, and with a growing sense of unease, I have come to the conclusion that the proposal does not merit support. For a start, it is far too big. As Jackson Carlaw has said, it will cover 29 hectares, or about 29 Murrayfield rugby pitches. In addition, the plant will have a substantial visual impact. For example, the chimneys will be 65m high—or, in old money, roughly 200ft—in an area where there are no buildings.
One of the primary claimed benefits of the plant is that it will produce energy for the national grid. However, there is no mention of how that energy will get to the grid, other than the throwaway reference to underground cables or pylons that Jackson Carlaw highlighted. Given that underground cables are the expensive option, it is obvious that overhead pylons will be used. So, in addition to the 29 hectare incinerator and the 200ft-high chimneys, local residents will have enormous electricity pylons marching across their skyline.
Even if it was thought that such an enormous incinerator plant was a good idea, the question remains why this particular site is being considered. Potential suitable sites for waste management activities have been laid down. They include “Industrial areas”. Loganswell is a greenfield site. Another is
“Degraded, contaminated or derelict land”.
Loganswell is none of those. A further example is
“Working and worked out quarries”.
The site is rough grazing land. “Existing waste management sites” does not apply, nor does
“buildings that can be easily adapted”.
Another option is
“Sites that have the potential to maximise ... the re-use of waste heat through co-location with potential heat users”.
There is nothing anywhere near the site that could use the waste heat, and talk of possible greenhouses does not really overcome the problem. The final option is
“Sites accessible to railways, waterways or the trunk and principal road network junctions.”
There are no waterways or railways in the area. It is close to the M77, although about a mile away from the nearest junction. The Loganswell site fails on most criteria for what constitutes a suitable site.
I want to look in more detail at the transport issue. It is proposed that about 1.5 million tonnes of rubbish will be transported to the site every year. The developers believe that that will have a minimal effect on the road network, as the material is already being moved around. However, the big difference is that the transportation of that 1.5 million tonnes of waste is currently spread across the whole of the road network. The proposal will concentrate all of it on the M77, and near Newton Mearns in particular.
There has been some disagreement about the total number of lorries that will be needed to transport the waste. I listened with interest to Jackson Carlaw’s calculations, but even if we accept that all the lorries used will be the maximum size available, that will still mean a 44-tonne lorry laden with around 29 tonnes of waste arriving at the site every three to 10 minutes, depending on who is correct about the number of lorries required. However, it seems unlikely that 100 per cent of the lorries will be that size; at least some of them will be around the most common size, which is the 26-tonne lorry, with a capacity of around 10 tonnes.
Anyone who knows the M77 knows that it can get extremely busy for considerable periods of the day, and so they cannot envisage that all those additional lorries will have anything other than a negative impact on an already busy road. The developers have acknowledged that issue and have said that they will timetable lorry journeys away from peak times. That is to be welcomed, but it means that at other times of the day and night there will be an even greater concentration of lorries than if they were evenly spread.
Scotland’s zero waste plan prioritises the collection of separated waste rather than incinerating that which can be recycled. SEPA has stated that it believes that only about 5 per cent of the total waste will be recycled, which is a woeful figure. Some might even say that this type of plan discourages recycling and encourages the continuation of an attitude that it is okay to throw everything away. That is not the way that we should be going. It is a retrograde step.
Richard Lochhead, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, in a speech to Parliament, said:
“In our approach to waste, we are determined to remain mindful of the wider climate change challenge and our energy policies. That is why the Government is opposed to large, inefficient energy-from-waste plants. Such plants could easily become white elephants and drain public funds. They require excessive transportation of waste and could crowd out recycling and waste prevention.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2008; c 5494.]
I agree. The proposal is too big and it is at the wrong site. There are clearly enormous issues to do with transport, not to mention the untried nature of the technology. I hope that members agree that this is the wrong plant, in the wrong place and at the wrong time.
18:18
I, too, thank Mr Carlaw for securing the debate and allowing Parliament to discuss an issue that has caused considerable concern, not to say alarm, to local residents in East Renfrewshire. The plans to build an enormous waste plant on green fields a mere mile or so from suburban homes came out of the blue. To say that the plant is not wanted is a huge understatement. The developer has pulled off the remarkable feat of uniting nearly everyone, including all the locally elected representatives a matter of weeks from an election. That takes some doing. It is a measure not just of the scale of the opposition to the plant but of the lack of any kind of convincing argument for it.
When I first heard of plans for a recycling village, whatever my doubts I thought that I ought to look into it further and find out exactly what was planned. I wanted to know what the plant might do and what it might look like. I am conscious, as I hope all members are, of the increasing need to reduce waste and increase recycling and, more important, to take responsibility for the issue. In the past, it has always been too easy to regard waste and refuse as someone else’s problem. One of the central messages of the environmental movement has been to educate us all to the contrary.
What has been encouraging in East Renfrewshire recently has been the willingness of local residents to adapt to changes to the normal refuse collections, with the weekly grey bin pick-up being replaced by a weekly brown bin pick-up. That has not been without problems, all of which I hope the council continues to address, but it shows the general acceptance of the need for us all to recycle more and waste less. The so-called recycling village fails to build on that work and new attitude. Unless we are careful, such proposals are in danger of provoking a reaction. People can see through false arguments pretty quickly. With the proposal for Loganswell, residents can see the profits that it might make for its developers, but it is difficult to spot any genuine green credentials. The scale of the proposed development scares most local people, rather than impressing them, and runs totally counter to the ethos of environmental responsibility.
Friends of the Earth, among other organisations, has highlighted the fact that the plant would be “Too big, and inefficient”. It has stated:
“Scotland’s Zero Waste Plan seeks to maximise high quality recycling, and to maximise energy recovery from unavoidable residual waste. It therefore makes a presumption against large, inefficient incinerators, and prioritises separated collection of waste.”
The development is not about helping the people of East Renfrewshire to deal with our waste; it is about bringing in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of refuse from across the west of Scotland, if not further afield. There will be hundreds of lorries every day carrying thousands of tonnes of rubbish from all over Scotland. What is environmentally friendly about that? It is the sort of project that, if labelled as recycling, will give recycling a bad name and will provoke cynicism, rather than support for ecologically sustainable policies.
I highlight my strong reservations about the detail of the proposed development. The fact that the company that is involved does not even own the land on which the plant is supposed to be built rang alarm bells with me and has caused great anxiety among those who live locally. Can members imagine being approached by a company telling them about the massive industrial plant that it is going to build on their land, when it has not bought anything but it has a map showing a huge incinerator in their garden? That is unsettling, to put it mildly.
As I suggested, despite my reservations, I was determined not to prejudge the application and to be open-minded about the need for the plant—nationally, if not locally—and the possible benefits that it might provide to the local economy, if not our ecology. The trouble is that, now that I have looked into the matter further, I can see no argument at a national level, never mind the local level. The company wishes to apply for permission nationally to build the development, in theory because it will generate substantial amounts of electricity. However, it is difficult not to conclude that the company is more interested in avoiding the local planning process, which I have no doubt would reject the proposal entirely.
SEPA has said that there is a presumption against inefficient plants because the heat energy that is produced, rather than the electricity, can be used only locally. All the heat that is generated from the plant would be wasted because it is too far away from Newton Mearns.
You should be finishing now, Mr Macintosh.
I want to end on a positive note for local residents, so I point out that I was encouraged by SEPA’s comments.
I finish by asking the minister to give us a positive message to reassure not just members but local residents that the Scottish Government will reject large-scale proposals of such a nature and that that is Government policy; that the views of local residents matter and will be taken into consideration; and that there is no room on unspoiled greenfield sites for developments of such a scale.
I remind members that it is four-minute speeches.
18:23
I agree with Ken Macintosh’s comment about controversial planning applications in which the developer does not yet own the land. The proposal that we are discussing is not the only example of that in Scotland. The issue is highly controversial and needs to be dealt with more widely.
I congratulate Jackson Carlaw on bringing the debate to the Parliament. I did not expect it to be opened by a reference to “Quatermass”, but a love of science fiction is obviously one of the vanishingly few characteristics that we genuinely share. If I understood him, the exact episode to which he referred might have been filmed at a nuclear site, which I will perhaps remind him of in a future debate.
Pretty much anything that we can do with our waste is controversial and comes with an ecological and social impact. That is one reason why we should begin every debate on waste with the point that we must produce less of it by reducing and reusing the materials that go through our economic system. However, there will always be, and certainly is at the moment, a substantial proportion that cannot be cut out of the system, and some waste management facilities will be necessary.
Recycling plants themselves are controversial, even though we want to recycle more. Landfill sites are hugely controversial, as well as having a wider, long-term ecological cost. Pretty much anything that we do with waste will be controversial. I think that there will always be some limited role for energy from waste, although it probably has more relevance for isolated communities, such as islands, where the cost of transporting waste to a recycling plant is an issue, than it has for other places. However, energy from waste must always be as efficient as possible, which means capturing the heat as well as the power. The proposed development is not a combined heat and power scheme. It will produce something like 150MW of heat that will mostly heat only the sky above the site, with absolutely no benefit to anyone.
Many of the relevant technologies have improved over the years and we should not be saying, “Never—no way.” However, aside from the inefficiency of the technology that is being proposed in the development that we are discussing tonight, the scale of the proposed site gives us concern. Apparently, the proposed floor space will be more than three times the floor space of the millennium dome. It will be capable of handling 1.5 million tonnes of raw waste a year. To put that into perspective, just over 55,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste were collected in East Renfrewshire in 2007-08. Waste has to be managed in some way, but I suggest that, above all other concerns about the development—such as the specific technology that is being used—it is the scale of the proposal that is most inappropriate, given the site that is proposed.
Building such massive plants with a locked-in dependency on that waste stream brings many risks as there is a need continually to feed the machine once it has been built. I draw members’ attention to the experience that has been reported from Kent. It appears that, rather than making money from a plant that was approved 10 years ago, Kent County Council could be losing £1 million a year as a result of the contract. The plant came on stream only recently because it took a long time to get through the planning process, but the council is now locked into a 25-year deal to provide the incinerator with 320,000 tonnes of waste to burn each year. The council now finds itself having to feed the machine—having to constantly find waste to burn, which means that it is burning waste that could be more valuably recycled. Speaking on behalf of the council, a councillor said that it had been a “stupid” decision in hindsight, as there had been no way to predict changes to the industry.
Those are the key concerns that are shared across the chamber.
I welcome Jackson Carlaw’s commitment to lie in front of the bulldozers. To end this speech on the science-fiction theme on which I began it, I should say that I welcome the idea of Jackson Carlaw lying down in front of a bulldozer in his dressing gown, Arthur Dent-style. If he would like me to put him in touch with anyone who can offer non-violent direct-action training, I would be happy to do so.
18:28
I, too, congratulate Jackson Carlaw on securing this debate. Of course, he can always be relied on for a colourful flourish. First, we had the visual image of East Renfrewshire turning into the ashtray of the west of Scotland and, as Patrick Harvie mentioned, we were given visions—perhaps going further than any of us would have wished—of “Quatermass”.
This is a serious issue, although the debate is unusual in the sense that the company has not yet made an application, and some of the information that we have had is of a loose and skeletal nature, which has not been entirely helpful. We await the planning application, the section 36 application, the environmental assessment and the transport impact assessment. We members assume that that leaves the minister entirely unfettered in relation to the way in which she can respond to the debate.
Sadly not, as the member is well aware. [Laughter.]
We may laugh, but it is a serious issue. We have a statutory responsibility for the collection of municipal waste, so we can make an impact through regulation, incentives and other means to ensure that people reuse, reduce and recycle. However, from my time as the Minister for Environment and Rural Development I know that the question of going beyond that and adding a mixture of industrial and commercial waste has always been a headache. Indeed, the impositions placed on us by European directives regarding landfill, which Patrick Harvie mentioned, mean that there are going to be issues with that. He suggested that such schemes may be appropriate only on islands. The perennial difficulty is how we ensure that it is the residue that is incinerated and that, in addition to having implemented measures to reduce waste, we have extracted every conceivable particle that can be recycled.
When the scheme was first mooted, the location seemed a bit unusual; nevertheless, a proposal that might deal with our problem of industrial waste in the west of Scotland was not to be instantly dismissed. However, having looked at it, I believe that there are at least five preliminary concerns, all of which other members have mentioned.
First, the applicant must justify why they want to develop in the green belt, and the compelling reasons for doing so are not clear to me. The site encircled by the green belt would have to meet the criteria that the Scottish ministers have set for its use, but it does not meet those criteria, so it is difficult to see the compelling argument for its choice.
Secondly, there are various problems with the volume and management of traffic, which are unsatisfactory. Like other members, I went to the presentation at which it was posited that there would be restrictions on how vehicles would access and egress the site. However, none of that information is in the public domain, so we must make our own assumptions about the possible deleterious effect.
Thirdly, the literature clearly talks about the site dealing with mixed residual and recyclable waste. That is totally at odds with the zero waste commitments or proposals that the Scottish ministers are introducing through regulations as part of the zero waste strategy. I simply do not understand how that can be squared.
Fourthly, I believe that the gasification and plasma vitrification processes are not to be dismissed. They may well be technically both innovative and interesting in certain applications. However, in the context of the other side of the proposal—the so-called green energy power station—the literature says that electricity is to be generated from the steam yet there is no reference whatever to heat recovery. That, too, is totally at odds with SEPA’s thermal treatment guidance and I do not understand how such a proposal can be put forward.
Fifthly, there is the question of the recycling recovery rate, which has been mentioned by other members. The applicant claims that it will be 40 per cent. Even taking that at face value and not mentioning SEPA’s suggestion that it will be only 5 per cent, the waste framework directive calls for a rate of 50 per cent by weight by 2020 and the Scottish ministers’ target is 70 per cent by 2025. The projected recycling recovery rate falls woefully short of those targets.
18:34
I, too, congratulate Jackson Carlaw on securing the debate. I do not have a constituency interest in the Loganswell proposal, but I have read about it and listened to what other members have said about it. It is clear that there is extensive public opposition to the proposal, not least because it involves the development of a 29-hectare industrial site on a greenfield area that is only 3 miles from a centre of population and because it proposes to bring in waste from 11 local authorities from across central and southern Scotland, with an estimated 350 to 400 vehicle movements just to bring the waste in. I, too, have looked at the Lifetime Recycling village website. The rhetoric looks cosy and green, but the information is skeletal, as Ross Finnie said.
The proposed facility would not be the first batch gasification plant in Scotland, as Scotgen operates such a plant at Dargavel, just outside Dumfries. The minister’s predecessor, Mike Russell, opened that plant in August 2009. Dargavel is a much smaller plant than the proposed plant. It is designed to process only 60,000 tonnes of hazardous and non-hazardous waste annually and it obtains its fuel from the nearby Ecodeco plant, which Shanks operates on Dumfries and Galloway Council’s behalf.
Little public concern was expressed about either facility. That is probably partly because they process Dumfries and Galloway’s own rubbish—people’s own rubbish is always slightly less distasteful than other people’s rubbish. The Ecodeco plant is also adjacent to the former landfill site, so it created no great increase in vehicle movements.
In defence of the technology, I must say that it is not incineration of raw waste. Batch gasification is a newer, much more sophisticated and cleaner technology. My home is less than 4 miles from Dargavel as the crow—or possibly the buzzard—flies and I have no fears whatever about toxic fumes affecting me, my family or my constituents. However, I have other significant concerns that apply to Loganswell and similar proposals and which other members share.
The rationale behind the Ecodeco plant was improving Dumfries and Galloway Council’s dismal record on recycling and sending material to landfill. It has achieved that—according to SEPA’s latest figures for July to September last year, 38.5 per cent of municipal solid waste is now recycled or composted and 46 per cent goes to landfill.
As other members have noted, the EU waste directive and the Scottish Government’s zero waste strategy describe a waste hierarchy that starts with prevention, which is followed by reuse, recycling and recovery, such as energy from waste. Landfill is at the bottom. In the Ecodeco plant, all wood, paper, cardboard, textiles and plastics become solid recovered fuel—they are burned and not recycled. The paper and cards that my constituents put in their rubbish bins in good faith are not recycled—they are burned. Ferrous and non-ferrous metals can be recycled as metals and biological materials can be composted, so the recycling at the Ecodeco plant is only partial.
Like Patrick Harvie, I do not object to recovering energy from waste that cannot be reused or recycled and if the best possible use is made of the heat. However, that is not—unfortunately—happening in Dumfries and Galloway and is probably not what will happen at Loganswell. Moreover, as far as I am aware, the Scotgen facility at Dargavel has yet to sell any energy to the national grid. Waste2Energy Engineering Ltd, which designed the gasification plant, owes a string of unpaid debts to small businesses throughout my constituency.
A bit like Kent County Council, Dumfries and Galloway Council is only five years into a 25-year contract with Shanks for a technology that is already out of date under EU and Scottish waste policy. If the targets change, I do not know what Dumfries and Galloway Council will do.
I therefore advise caution and scepticism about such proposals. In their consideration, the phrase about not touching with a bargepole comes to mind.
18:38
I think that all members will agree that the debate has been interesting and valuable, even if it sounded at times as if it might turn into a science-fiction convention—I hate to advise Jackson Carlaw and Patrick Harvie that I, too, am a fan.
How best to manage waste never fails to stimulate discussion. Notwithstanding Ross Finnie’s open invitation to me to compromise myself and my colleagues, members must know that I cannot comment on specific proposals. I will give a waste policy overview, because that is part and parcel of the debate.
All members agree that we need to change how we view and manage the waste that we produce, because the days of straightforward landfill are over. Members are right to point out that a key objective of the zero waste plan is to increase significantly the quality and quantity of recyclable material that is captured—the emphasis is on recyclable material. Indeed, the Scottish Government has set a target of recycling 70 per cent of all waste by 2025.
Of course, delivering zero waste policy and meeting future waste targets will require changes and improvements to our infrastructure. However, since one objective of the zero waste plan is to increase significantly recycling performance, much of the infrastructure that is needed will be associated more with enhanced collection and recycling services than waste plants. That does not mean that energy-from-waste plants or other types of residual treatment facilities will not be needed—they will—but that the policy direction that is set out in the plan will reduce the volume of available material to feed those types of facility. In a sense, that is the point that Elaine Murray turned on its head.
Although it is important, the role of residual treatment facilities will be a restricted one. Indeed, the Scottish Government is currently consulting on proposed legislation that includes measures to restrict the materials that can be processed in energy-from-waste plants. Those measures are necessary as we need to ensure that materials that are capable of being recycled do not end up in such plants. That is the best way in which to ensure that energy from waste is genuinely sustainable and does not crowd out recycling. Elaine Murray made that point. It is important that that is the context in which we keep the future role of energy from waste.
I turn to planning policy. Members will be well aware that waste management installations require planning permission and a range of other consents as necessary. The Government has made significant progress in modernising the planning system, streamlining processes, opening up the transparency around major developments and clarifying the relationship between planning and waste. Scottish planning policy is clear about the challenges that the Government zero waste goals set and the significant increase in waste management infrastructure that will be needed to meet our targets.
In order to support planning authorities in making soundly based decisions on applications for waste infrastructure, we recently provided the evidence base on the infrastructure capacity that will be required across Scotland. We published that online in a revision to annex B of the zero waste plan. If members have not had a chance to look at annex B as yet, they might find it useful to do so. The guidance will assist planning authorities in preparing development plans and determining applications for new waste infrastructure across Scotland. The new data provide a robust context for the consideration of the scale of new proposals alongside remaining matters that need to be addressed. Scottish planning policy is very clear that decisions on energy-from-waste infrastructure must also take account of SEPA’s thermal treatment of waste guidelines. Among other things, the guidelines require high levels of efficiency and set out that all proposals of this kind need to comply with the strict requirements of the waste incineration directive.
From experience, I know that proposals for waste management infrastructure frequently arouse strong emotions. Like other members, I understand the passion with which Jackson Carlaw speaks. Those strong emotions extend to recycling centres, too. The sentiment does not single out only energy-from-waste plants and landfills, a point that Patrick Harvie recognised. There is considerable controversy around all of this. Some people reject the idea that waste that is generated outside their area should be treated in their area. In a small country such as Scotland, this is an issue that we have to tackle carefully. It will always be likely that waste will cross local authority boundaries, as it does already. Do people seriously imagine that we can have an array of this kind of infrastructure in every local authority area in Scotland?
We need to rise to the challenge of meeting Scotland’s waste and resource management needs. If we view waste as a resource, there is an opportunity to create jobs and for the energy that is created to heat and power local homes and businesses. This will form part of the efficiency process in infrastructure projects, an approach that is set out in annex B to the zero waste plan, which states that need and proximity for waste management facilities should be considered strategically. We need to recognise that the achievement of a sustainable strategy might involve waste crossing planning boundaries within Scotland.
The Lifetime Recycling village proposal—this is where I have to tread carefully—that is the focus of our debate is presented as a single project. However, given the dual functions of the proposal, it will require separate consents under two planning regimes. As the biomass plant element of the Lifetime Recycling village is proposed to be an electricity-generating station of more than 50MW, that part of the application will be determined by the Scottish ministers under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989. The recycling and sorting facilities on site, which the applicant also proposes, will be considered under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 by East Renfrewshire Council.
If and when the application is formally submitted, members of the public will have an initial 28-day period to submit representations to the Scottish ministers, followed by another 28-day consultation once ministers have received and published their first statutory consultee response. The statutory consultees are the local planning authority, SEPA and Scottish Natural Heritage. Public representations are of course a material planning consideration and they will be considered alongside all consultation responses and planning and legal obligations before ministers come to a decision.
I understand that the application has already been through the pre-application scoping process and the formal Scottish Government scoping opinion has been issued. The developer for the Lifetime Recycling village proposal is currently working on the draft environmental statement, which I understand that it plans to have ready for checking in the summer.
As the application for the biomass plant element of the Lifetime Recycling village will ultimately be determined by the Scottish ministers, as indicated, it would be inappropriate for me to comment any further on the merits or otherwise of the application. I hope, however, that members are reassured that there is a rigorous process in place to ensure that the application is considered objectively, having regard to all relevant Scottish Government policies.
Meeting closed at 18:46.