ISSUE 117 | DEC/JAN 2024
26 Battery Waste Conference 30 Infrastructure 36 Product Stewardship
Mandated procurement needs to be the norm By Inside Waste
Copenhill - a heat and power waste-to-energy plant and a sports park in Amager, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Big hitters come out swinging as WtE comes to the fore By Inside Waste
PP: 100024538
ISSN 1837-5618
WHETHER you call it Energy from Waste, or Waste to Energy, the process is one that those within the resource recovery industry believe is the answer to residual waste (along with landfill gas capture), but those outside of it see as an existential threat to our very existence. So much so that in 2022 the NSW state government went as far as to state on its planning website that it will “ban potential operators of EfW facilities from obtaining an environmental protection license to operate the facility except in four nominated regional areas, with some exceptions” as part of changes it made to the Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Regulation 2022. Which brings us to the WMRR Energy from Waste Conference that was held at the Sydney Cricket Ground in early November. One of the key panel seminars featured some heavy hitters in the waste industry including Cleanaway CEO/MD Mark Schubert, his counterpart from Veolia Richard Kirkman, East
Rockingham Waste to Energy plant CEO Jason Pugh, and ResourceCo’s Energy Systems CEO, Henry Anning. MC’ed by WMRR CEO Gayle Sloan, there was a lot of common ground found in the issues that surround the Waste to Energy platform as a solution to residual waste. Kirkman’s first response, and a telltale sign of how he feels about how the industry is being treated, was in response to Sloan’s opening remarks that it was going to be hard to get to the 80 per cent landfill diversion target set by the government. “If we build enough energy from waste plants in the next five years, we can,” he said. “Things are just taking too long; we just need to get on with it. This is a safe, reliable working technology that just comes out of the box. And it’s such a real headache to go through a planning process to get one approved.” Kirkman knows that one of the reasons such facilities are not being built where they are needed – i.e. close to where the waste is being generated – is due to social license. That in itself is not a problem if there is a general
agreement across a whole plethora of stakeholders in the area of concern. He doesn’t believe that is the case in most circumstances though. “People think that if one person says they don’t want a facility, then the facility doesn’t have social license,” he said. “And that’s wrong. And I think that needs to be clarified at government level in the policy – that if you are following what is being required, you have a leg up on getting there quicker. Otherwise, we’re never going to get there in time.” Kirkman said that Veolia has plans in New South Wales and Victoria in terms of getting facilities up and running, but the government needs to come to the party. How optimistic is he? “The future is bright for our sector, if we get these changes made,” he said. “And I think we all need to join together for a more consistent message to the policymakers around this. Our sector is not traditionally good at that. These officials hear a lot of different voices all the time on different matters. (Continued on page 10)
ACCORDING to the Oxford Reference Dictionary, among several other meanings, the word ‘procurement’ refers to the ‘purchase of goods and services by the public sector at all levels of government’. It is a word that is littered throughout the many purchase orders and contracts signed between the various levels of government and its third-party contractors who are responsible for either building infrastructure or maintaining current plant, buildings, and machinery. Plenty of operators in the waste and resource recovery sector would love to see a sentence or two in every contract that would say something along the lines of “the contractor must use X percentage of resources recovered from recycled products in this project, yadda, yadda, yadda”. While most government departments like the idea, there are other issues that need addressing. What are the main blockages to getting such mandated procurement in these contracts? There are several, including cost, the amount of throughput/ feedstock available, and the quality of the end product. At a seminar at the AWRE conference in Sydney earlier this year, two members of the NSW government outlined policy indicators and what the NSW government looks for when awarding contracts as it pertains to procurement. (Continued on page 16)
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