$400m Kwinana waste plant plan

A $400 MILLION waste-to-energy plant slated for Kwinana’s industrial strip will be the first of its kind in Australia if it can shore up a waste supply and community support.

The project has already garnered the support of Premier Colin Barnett, and plant proponent Moltoni Energy says it has in-principle support from the Town of Kwinana and the City of Rockingham.

The plant will burn household and industrial waste at extremely high temperatures, converting the waste into heat energy to produce steam for industry or electricity.

Moltoni Energy managing director Peter Dyson said the technology was almost identical to a standard power station except for the firing system for the mass combustion of waste.

“There are 900 of these plants worldwide but in Australia we have never had to worry about what we do with our waste,” he said.

“It has only been in the last five years that we have started to realise the cost of producing a secure landfill that doesn’t emit gas and doesn’t leach into rivers.”

Moltoni has not identified a suitable site in Kwinana and will need to secure a reliable waste supply as well as an energy off-take agreement from an electricity wholesaler or a steam user to be commercially viable.

“These (plants) are major infrastructure projects and what the financial institutions look for is how long you have got your waste streams secured and how long have you got your offtake secured,” Mr Dyson said.

Moltoni said local industry in the Kwinana precinct would like the plant to be built immediately and their initial contact with local environmental groups revealed some support.

The base load waste supply is likely to come from the Kwinana and Rockingham municipalities, which have both sent fact-finding representatives to similar waste-to-energy plants in Japan.

However, the project will also need to secure the support of the local population.

John King is the chair of the Waste Management Association of Australia’s Resource and Energy Recovery Working Group.

One of the group’s key functions is to deepen the understanding of alternative waste treatments within the community, industry and government.

Mr King said the public was very enthusiastic about recovering more material from waste but some nervousness about burning refuse remained.

“You are living more dangerously living alongside a road than alongside one of these plants,” Mr King told WA Business News.

“But they (the community) can stop a project proceeding, it may not be on good technical grounds but it will stop a project.”

Melbourne-based Moltoni Energy is a partnership between Perth-based Rob Moltoni and Peter Dyson. Mr Moltoni is managing director of the Moltoni Group but this operates as a separate entity.