Waste to Energy Inquiry in Worcestershire

23 November 2011

A public inquiry into the planned 200,000 tonne 'EnviRecover' waste to energy facility that will treat residual waste in Worcestershire is due to commence.

Worcestershire County Council approved plans for Mercia Waste Management's facility near Hartlebury in March. However, the site is on green belt land and was called in by the secretary of state for communities and local government, Eric Pickles to be the subject of a public inquiry.

According to the company its proposed plant is of an appropriate size to treat all the residual collected in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, and will generate around 15.5 MW of electricity.

The facility will also have the potential to supply heat to local businesses and the company said that the 40,000 tonnes of ash that it expects the plant to produce each year will be reprocessed for use as an aggregate.

For the purposes of the inquiry, the company has supplemented its original Environmental Statement with an assessment of the likely significant environmental effects of a heat off-take connection, as well as an update on potential effects of the scheme on Great Crested Newts.

Read more : http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/display/article-display/4835796478/articles/waste-management-world/waste-to-energy/2011/11/Waste_to_Energy_Inquiry_in_Worcestershire.html

A Biogas Friendly Bill

Since the Public Utility Regulatory Act was passed in 1978, power utilities have been required to pay an “avoided cost” rate to certain types of small power production, cogeneration facilities and other types of qualifying facilities. That rate is typically the cost of the cheapest type of energy the utility has in its portfolio—usually coal—and that’s a price with which small renewable energy providers cannot compete.

More than 20 years later, PURPA is doing something it was never intended for—limiting individual states’ ability to make their own decisions about incentivizing small distributed renewable energy. A new bill introduced in the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, however, could change that.
PURPA Plus, which is intended to encourage distributed generation of renewable energy, would remove the avoided cost restriction and let states set their own prices, according to Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council. In many cases, PURPA makes small renewable energy generation unfeasible.

read more : http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/5999/a-biogas-friendly-bill/