By Kieran Rooney and Rachel Eddie
Victoria wants to burn an extra 500,000 tonnes of rubbish a year to avoid creating new landfills, but the projects are facing community and regulatory barriers, jeopardising the state’s increasing reliance on incinerators.
By 2053, the government is expecting waste-to-energy facilities to burn a fifth of the state’s trash to divert waste away from landfills and produce reliable electricity.
The Hampton Park landfill that the EPA has ruled cannot become a waste transfer station.Credit: Eddie Jim
To achieve this, the state government last year doubled the amount of waste that can be burned and is now seeking to lift this limit again, taking it to 2.5 million tonnes.
If successful, it would be the second increase to the cap in six months for a technology that has struggled to find sites due to opposition from the community and, in some cases, Labor’s own MPs.
The cap does not need to be lifted through legislation, but can be altered through the minister’s own powers.
A newly created Victorian Recycling Infrastructure Plan assumes that by 2053 the state will produce 9 million tonnes of waste every year. Of this, 2 million tonnes is forecast to be burnt under current regulations, making waste-to-energy facilities pivotal to the government’s goals.
“At this rate, Victoria will start to run out of approved landfill capacity in the mid-2030s,” a regulatory impact statement for the change says.
“Increasing the cap limit may allow more waste to be converted to energy, preserving available landfill airspace and supporting the state’s ambitious waste diversion targets.”
But the technology has faced stiff community opposition.
Plans to burn 2 million tonnes by 2027 are now considered unrealistic given facilities have taken between four and 10 years to become fully operational. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) last week warned the state was not on track to meet its target of diverting 80 per cent of waste away from landfill by 2030.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) this week rejected a proposed waste transfer station in Melbourne’s south-east that local councils were relying on to direct their kerbside rubbish to before it was converted to energy at an incinerator in the Latrobe Valley. Hampton Park residents had been campaigning against that project, having previously been told the existing tip would be rehabilitated into parkland.
Lara locals have also been campaigning against a proposed waste-to-energy incinerator near Geelong, and its 2023 approval by the EPA is being challenged in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
Local property developer Richard Bisinella has commissioned reports from environmental consultants Peter J. Ramsay and Associates to test the forecast the facility would generate 190,000 tonnes a year of C02 emissions.
Ramsay in November found it could produce up to 425,000 tonnes a year, which Bisinella argues would be more than double the threshold that triggers an approvals process assessing the project’s environmental effects but which was not required as part of the permit application. Excluding emissions from organic waste, the consultants estimated emissions would be 220,000 tonnes annually, still above the threshold.
The analysis was reaffirmed by Ramsay last month.
Lara developer Richard Bisinella and his father, Lino Bisinella, at the proposed waste-to-energy facility site.Credit: Joe Armao
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who is the federal member for Corio, state Lara MP Ella George, as well as neighbouring Labor MPs Alison Marchant, Libby Coker and Christine Couzens have all opposed the project.
In an Instagram video last month, Marles said the Lara facility was “utterly inappropriate” and would dominate the skyline, while George said the nearest homes were only 350 metres away.
City of Greater Geelong wrote to Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny in February, seeking to become the responsible authority for any future waste-to-energy proposal.
Prospect Hill International, the operators behind the proposal, reaffirmed that its greenhouse gas assessment that formed part of the EPA application found the project would emit about 190,000 tonnes of C02 a year. They argue this ultimately would reduce emissions by 315,000 tonnes a year by diverting waste and that the project’s approval followed “three years of rigorous environmental assessment by the EPA”.
An artist’s impression of the proposed Prospect Hill International waste-to-energy plant in Lara.
A spokesperson said the project was actively moving ahead despite the VCAT case.
State Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio has also opposed a similar project near her northern Melbourne electorate after shepherding the state’s waste-to-energy strategy through parliament in 2022.
An Allan government spokesperson said the technology was only one part of its waste and recycling plan but it could play an important role diverting from landfill.
“Only waste that cannot be recycled can be processed in waste-to-energy facilities,” the spokesperson said.
“The cap strikes the right balance between diverting as much waste as possible from landfill, while managing the risk of over-reliance on the technology.
“Proposals for waste-to-energy facilities are assessed by multiple authorities and the views of the local community will always be considered as part of that assessment process.”
VAGO last week warned the state was not on track to meet its goal of diverting 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030.
The amount of waste diverted from landfill remained about 69 per cent between 2018-19 and 2022-23, the auditor-general said, which meant the state was also expected to fail to meet an earlier target to divert 72 per cent of waste by 2025.
“If the department is to reach its 2030 target, it needs to work with the waste and recycling sector, households and other businesses to recover more waste,” VAGO said.
“It especially needs to focus on recovering more from high-volume waste streams and those with low rates of recovery, such as organic waste from the business sector.”
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