Waste-to-energy projects stalled across Australia as regional residents oppose plans to process city rubbish
The proposed Narwonah Energy and Circular Chemicals Project would process waste from across the east coast. (Supplied: Narromine Shire Positive Change Community Group)
It sounds like a win-win solution for Australia’s waste disposal problems — take a million tonnes of rubbish and turn it into energy.
But regional communities say producing energy from waste is not safe and they do not want it in their backyard.
There are over 2,000 energy-from-waste plants operating globally, but Australia has been late to the party.
In New South Wales the state government wants to build four facilities, with most of them outside metro areas, but there is only one currently progressing through the planning system.
That is the Veolia Advanced Energy Recovery Centre (ARC) at Woodlawn, near Goulburn, which would use “moving grate technology” to burn rubbish at high temperatures to create steam, which could be used to power turbines and produce enough energy for 40,000 homes.
The company said gases from the incinerator would be cleaned to the highest international standard, and no liquids or odours would be discharged.
The NSW government has listed the $600 million project as “state significant”.
The project was meant to be operational by 2023, but it is facing community opposition and is still caught up in approvals processes.
The NSW Department of Planning is waiting for the applicant to respond to issues raised in submissions, and a report is expected by the middle of the year.
In the state’s north, the Richmond Valley Council decided in November 2022 to pause any active investigation of energy-from-waste facilities and to focus on other waste streams, such as food organics and recycling.
Opposition to Narwonah plant
In western New South Wales, the Dubbo community is fighting against a proposed energy-from-waste proposal linked to the Inland Rail project.
The Narwonah Energy and Circular Chemicals Project (NECCP) would process more than a million tonnes of waste brought in by rail from across the east coast.
The company behind the proposal, Asia Pacific Waste Solutions, said the facility would use an anaerobic digester to process the waste, without the need for incineration.
But the Narromine Shire Positive Change Community Group disputes that.
Spokesperson Bruce Maynard said the process being proposed was defined as an incinerator by both European Union and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines.
He said the plant will contaminate the region if it is approved and points to this diagram from the proponents, highlighting two points where exhaust gasses would be emitted.
Asia Pacific Waste Solutions did not respond to an ABC request for clarification on this issue.
But technical specialist Amal Jugdeo from Hitachi Zosen Inova Australia, which is advising developers of several waste-to-energy projects in Australia, warned the proposed gasification technology has not been proven at large commercial scale to process municipal waste.
He pointed to the 2016 decision by major US gas producer Air Product to abandon its gasification projects in the UK, resulting in a billion-dollar write-off for the company.
Judy Smith farms 5 kilometres from the proposed Narromine site, and said the site on agricultural land was also not suitable.
“It’s going to be built on top of a flood plain and a shallow aquifer, and the ground there cracks,” she said.
“If you start putting things like tanks that are containing waste material on top of ground that cracks you don’t need to be that smart before you realise that you are sitting on a time bomb.”
A NSW Department of Planning spokesperson told the ABC it has not received a timeline for the project from the applicant, or a development application.
Meanwhile in Victoria, the EPA issued a development licence in December 2023 to Prospect Hill International for an energy-from-waste project near Geelong.
It would process 400,000 tonnes a year, much less than the proposed Narwonah facility, but would also use moving grate technology.
That system passes the waste through several stages, including drying, pyrolysis/gasification and combustion, before getting to the burnout stage.
Technology is proven says waste recovery peak body
Gayle Sloan, the CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR) — the national peak body for the waste and resource recovery industry — described the current technology as safe, sophisticated, and clean.
She said new plants no longer burn waste but use closed boiler systems to generate heat and electricity.
She said Australia had the highest standard of safety and management of emissions in the world, and that NSW is using international best practice while Queensland requires projects to identify reference sites with proven technologies.
Miles Mason is the technical director of global sustainability company SLR Consulting.
He has been closely involved with the development of the WA plants and said the technology in modern plants has been proven in locations around the world, including Europe and Japan.
“They’re building very large facilities in the Middle East and Africa, and emissions of dioxins, metals, or dust, all of those things, are controlled,” he said.
Western Australia’s East Rockingham waste-to-energy facility is set to process 300,000 tonnes of waste from Perth by the end of 2024.
Mr Mason compared modern incinerators, with their closed systems and filters to clean up emissions, similar to the big filtration systems on road tunnels in our major cities.
“Any off gases that come out go through an extensive scrubbing system, similar to the [road] tunnels that have been built all over Sydney and Melbourne,” he said.
Mr Mason said incinerators are not perfect but they were the best solution to Australia’s waste problem as Sydney, in particular, is running out of time.
“Sydney’s capacity for land filling waste is coming to an end rapidly so other solutions are required,” he said.
Environment agency confident about safety
A spokesperson from the Environment Protection Authority said NSW had some of the strongest rules around energy from waste projects in the country.
“The policy requires proponents to use international best practice technology, meet stringent air emission limits, and apply the ‘good neighbour principle’,” the spokesperson said.
That principle required project managers to consider the impact of waste deliveries and operating hours on people and businesses in the area, and to make information about emissions and what resources will be produced from the waste readily available.
The NSW government will be reviewing the state’s energy-from-waste settings this year.
What are other countries doing with incinerators?
Jane Bremmer from environment group Zero Waste Australia said the US and the EU were backing away from waste incinerators due to the health concerns for populations around them.
“There haven’t been any new incinerators built in the US since, I believe, the late 80s,” she said.
Ms Bremmer said the European Commission had introduced a significant carbon tax on incinerators and directed member nations to decommission old facilities, while The Netherlands had introduced a moratorium on waste incineration due to environmental concerns.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, came to Australia last year and warned about the health risks of incineration of waste.
“Incineration imposes heavy health and other costs on local communities, and it is a significant source of greenhouse gases,” he said.
“It has been reported that even the most modern incinerators produce dioxins, furans, and toxic ash.”
Jane Bremmer wants to see governments focus on collection and separation of waste to reduce the volume, and treatment technologies that do not involve burning.
That includes anaerobic-digestion systems which turn waste into fertiliser, biological treatments that reduce the volume of waste and stabilise what is left, and chemical processes like gas-phase reduction.