Plans for a second waste-to-energy plant in Perth have advanced after the HZI consortium signed its fourth supply deal, with the City of Cockburn.
Plans for a second waste-to-energy plant in Perth have advanced after the HZI consortium signed its fourth supply deal, with the City of Cockburn.
Cockburn will supply an estimated 27,000 tonnes per annum of waste to the facility, which will process a total of 330,000t each year.
The project is backed by Swiss company Hitachi Zosen Inova, along with local company New Energy Corporation and global investor Tribe Corporation.
The consortium plans to build its waste-to-energy plant at East Rockingham, not far from Kwinana where construction of the $670 million Phoenix Energy plant recently commenced.
Both facilities plan to produce energy from municipal waste that currently goes to landfill.
The City of Cockburn agreement, signed on Friday, comes after the HZI consortium was named as preferred tenderer in March this year.
It follows the signing of an earlier waste supply deal with four members of the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council, which will supply between 95,000 and 115,000tpa.
The HZI consortium also plans to take waste from contractor Suez and the Water Corporation, but details are not available.
New Energy chief executive Jason Pugh told Business News the energy-from-waste (EfW) facility has sufficient contracted waste now to reach financial close, which is on track to be achieved in the first quarter of 2019.
Environment Minister Stephen Dawson has shown little enthusiasm for EfW projects.
“There is a place for waste-to-energy in managing residual waste, but not at the expense of reasonable efforts to avoid and reuse,” Mr Dawson told Business News last month.
In line with these comments, the WA government’s draft waste strategy released last month stated that energy recovery was the least preferred of all resource recovery options, after reuse and recycling.
New Energy Corp chair Enzo Gullotti said waste to energy projects should not and need not impede higher-order recovery processes for waste streams.
“Our contracting structure allows councils to recover as much resources from waste as they can and to educate communities on minimizing waste generation.”
City of Cockburn waste manager Lyall Davieson said the 20-year agreement with the HZI consortium was an important step toward removing the city’s waste from landfill.
“The contents of the yellow top bin (plastics/glass/paper) will be recycled, the green top bin (garden waste) will be mulched and now the red top bin will go to the proposed HZI consortium EfW facility in the East Rockingham industrial estate,” he said.
“Waste disposed at landfill attracts an ever-increasing state government landfill levy, which is currently $70 per tonne, but this levy does not apply to EfW.
“The state government has determined that no further landfills will be approved on the Swan Coastal Plain.
“When existing landfills reach capacity, the city, along with many other metropolitan local governments, will have to transport general waste to regional or inland rural areas, a costly proposition that would also increase the city’s transport carbon emissions,” Mr Davieson said.
Under the terms of the agreement, the city will supply its residual waste on a ‘waste arising basis’, meaning it will only pay for capacity it uses.
This means there is no penalty for implementing waste reduction schemes or introducing a third bin for compostable organic waste.
HZI managing director Australia Marc Stammbach emphasised today the company’s experience in developing, constructing, and operating waste-to-energy plants worldwide.
“We have successfully delivered projects in major global capitals such as London and Paris," he said.
"Importantly, we stay with the project from conception through construction, and, once the project is commissioned, we then lead the operations and maintenance activities for the life of the plant.
"This continuity will ensure that the East Rockingham Resource Recovery Facility is successful.”
