Incinerator - emissions reaching East Dulwich

[EvaC]

Hi,

I've seen articles on the incinerator etc but this issue didn't really grab my attention until I saw the following paragraph:

"emissions from the proposed waste incinerator will be released into the atmosphere and, with the prevailing winds, be cast out over Waddon, central Croydon, Norbury and Norwood, and carried eastwards towards Dulwich, Tulse Hill, Sanderstead and West Wickham."

That would mean East Dulwich??

Rest of the article herehttp://insidecroydon.com/2012/03/17/wake-up-waddon-this-really-is-a-1bn-incinerator/

[Huguenot]

That's not really an article, more of a politically motivated blog.

We had an incinerator right in the middle of Worcester, where I grew up.

Didn't even notice it.

Fuss over nothing. Well, over votes I suspect.

[Burbage]

We already receive emissions from SELCHP, and this looks similar. Provided it's run properly (and there are laws about that) the worst that'll come out is nitrogen oxides.

That might sound scary, but they'll be a very small addition to the same sort of pollution we already enjoy from motor traffic.

[TE44]

http://prosiectgwyrdd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/cardiff-cllrs-11-billion-prosiect.html?m=1

edited just realised though connected not specific toED.

[UncleBen]

What?? No, can't be. Not in my back yard?

[EvaC]

I don't care about the politics, but I do care about my health...

The nitrogen oxides aren't great for anyone's health.

[edhistory]

EvaC Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> That would mean East Dulwich??

>

From Beddington Lane?

John K

[TE44]

http://www.energyforlondon.org/pq-on-selchp/

[Burbage]

EvaC Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The nitrogen oxides aren't great for anyone's

> health.

True enough. And, having looked at some actual numbers in the meantime, particularly with an eye to the future, I'm not sure they aren't worth worrying about.

SELCHP handles around 420,000 tonnes of waste each year. According to Greenpeace (in the interests of balance), incineration generates up to 5000 cubic meters of gases (mostly air) per tonne. So that's 2.1bn cubic meters of gases. The European Limit (which SELCHP doesn't break, apparently) is 200mg of oxides of nitrogen per cubic meter of gas, which amounts to 420,000 kg of nitrogen oxides over a year.

A car emits around 80mg per km driven (assuming all cars meets the Euro 6 standards for new vehicles that will come into force in 2015). If we assume Londoners drive around 5000 miles a year in their cars (less than the national average, and a bit below where car club membership makes sense), that's 8000km or 640g of nitrogen oxides (NOx) per car.

An incinerator, therefore, kicks out as much as 660,000 clean new cars, and it would take just 3.7 incinerators to match the total NOx emissions from London's 2.5m cars. That's faintly shocking.

There are lots of things wrong with my sums. For a start, the emissions standards for cars are currently much higher, not all cars on the roads are very new and some of them might clamber out of the gutter for more than a weekly crawl round the South Circular. It's also likely that Greenpeace's 5000 tonnes of gas per tonne of waste is a neat exaggeration aimed at the lazy headline, given that Greenpeace, bless their cotton socks, are sometimes less inclined to thought than tub-thumping. But that's not the point.

The point is that we're currently doing a lot of work, and spending a lot of money, on reducing NOx emissions from cars and other sources, and it seems very silly to let incinerators put them all back again. In short, although the reductions in car emissions over the next couple of decades will be equivalent to 33 more incinerators, we're not reducing car emissions just so we can build incinerators. We're reducing emissions because they're bad for people, children (where different) and, in all probability, kittens.

Admittedly, an incinerator is not a car but an energy generator, and if we compare emissions from incinerators with those from coal-fired power plants, they look very much better. And cars are far from the only sources of NOx pollution - the Baltic Wharf monitoring (as per this air quality report) showed no clear difference in NOx levels whether the incinerator was operating or not. Possibly because incinerators have chimneys, meaning all the nice pollution won't get inhaled by us, but by unfortunates in the provinces or, even better, France (though, again, that's more along the lines of cheating than progress).

Whichever way I look at it, I'm still faintly shocked, and given that it's taken a largely sober Saturday evening, when I'd rather have been shaking whatever it's called in a cosy discotheque, to dissect a bunch of numbers that really shouldn't need dissecting, I'm inclined to wonder if someone hasn't gone to some trouble to make it difficult. There may be other issues with other pollutants, too and, although the Health Impact Assessment of 2005 for SELCHP didn't seem to find anything worrying, that, again, was only against current guidelines.

Sadly, it's difficult to get much sense out of issues like this. Apart from the obvious attempts at politicking, commercial puffery and the tendentious invention of correlations (bless their cotton socks, again), which really don't help, it's difficult to see what's best. Incinerator emissions at present aren't really noticeable amidst all the rest of the pollution. But in the world we're building, with cleaner cars, they'll become a greater proportion of the whole. On the one hand, air quality in London will improve overall, and we'll get power from our rubbish. On the other hand, air quality (not necessarily in London, given the chimneys) won't improve as quick as it might. It's tricky, but I'm not sure we'd be wise to leave the decision entirely to a bunfight between commercial interests, tub-thumping campaigners and (not that they don't mean well) politicians. Though I confidently expect that's exactly what we'll do.

[johnie]

Burbage, what an excellent post, one of the best I've read in a while.

[Huguenot]

The one thing people forget in this situation is that this is NOT a yes/no discussion: it IS an either/or discussion.

From a waste disposal situation it's EITHER landfill OR an incinerator. In this scenario an incinerator wins by a spectacular margin.

From an energy situation it's EITHER fossil/nuclear power OR an incinerator. In this scenario an incinerator wins by a spectacular margin.

So comparing incinerators with family car output is completely irrelevant.

All of the references made criticizing the incinerator either completely ignore this issue, or in the case of Greenpeace fail to tell you that actually they don't want any of the above. A manifesto that's downright childish in its wishful thinking. People aren't going to suddenly stop creating waste or use less electricity.

Once you take those issues into account, I'm afraid the incinerator will simply boil down to a NIMBY argument.

I have no respect for NIMBYISM here: it's built on poor science. The reason why incinerators are difficult to study is that their environmental impact is so small that you can't tell if they're on or off.

[TE44]

http://www.bbacweb.com/Alternatives.htm

link above on alternative.

Kings Lyn have signed a 16 year contract with another

alternative company "material works ltd" who will deal with processing

residual waste, turning it to a viable end product.

Link to Kings Lynn below

http://www.outsourcereye.co.uk/2013/01/14/bc_of_kings_lynn_and_west_norfolk_contracts_material_works/#.UU8sgKMRcYI

[polla2256]

Can we not have a 21st century plasma gasification plant instead of what is basically a big oven ???

[JSL2000]

Hello, I saw that a while back some ED forum posters were following the Croydon Incinerator issue, which may blow fumes over East Dulwich. For those interested in learning more there is a Stop the Incinerator fund raising campaign on Feb 24th

in Croydon

http://insidecroydon.com/2014/02/10/stop-the-incinerator-campaign-fund-raiser-feb-24/