Paris, May 5 – 2011 - Veolia Environmental Services, with its subsidiary Veolia Environmental Services (UK) Plc, the leading UK recycling and waste management company, has been selected as the preferred bidder by Hertfordshire County Council for its 25-year residual waste treatment PFI contract.
The bid associates recycling with energy recovery consisting of a combined Mechanical Pre-Treatment (MPT) and Energy Recovery Facility (ERF). This will boost significantly the county’s recycling rate and maximise landfill diversion whilst providing financial savings and environmental benefits to the Council and its residents over the contract period.
The front-end mechanical pre-treatment operation will extract around 28,000 tonnes of recyclable ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics and other materials from the residual waste arriving at the site providing a beneficial boost to recycling rates.
By processing the remaining 352,000 tonnes of residual waste using high efficiency, energy recovery technology, some 26MW of electricity will be provided to the National Grid – sufficient to power 50,000 Hertfordshire homes, with the further potential to distribute heat to suitable local users.
An extensive consultation and community engagement process will be undertaken as a basis from which to develop further the design concept and development proposals ahead of the submission of a planning application towards the end of 2011. The application will be accompanied by a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment and a range of other supporting statements and reports that will enable the proposals to be robustly assessed prior to any planning determination.
In addition to significant employment and economic activity created during the construction period, a total of fifty-two long-term jobs will be created for the period of operation.
John Wood, Hertfordshire County Council’s Director of Environment and Commercial Services, added: “We’re delighted to have got to this significant point in the process to find an alternative to landfill. We’re now entering into the last phase of the procurement and we’re looking forward to working with Veolia to finalise the details of the contract and get the best services for Hertfordshire’s residents.”
Denis Gasquet, Chief Executive Officer of Veolia Environmental Services and Senior Executive Vice President of Veolia Environnement, said: “We are proposing a sustainable approach designed to both increase recycling and convert the remaining residual waste into energy and the development of an optimised facility which minimises environmental impact and can be assimilated into the surrounding area.”