Australia's first waste-to-energy plant ignites fierce debate over health and climate risks
WA has embraced waste-to-energy technology that burns 460,000 tonnes of rubbish annually, despite federal opposition and warnings the technology could pose health risks.
It’s been lauded by West Australian Premier Roger Cook as a key source of low-carbon energy and derided by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen as “disgusting” – waste-to-energy processing has arrived in Australia, igniting a fierce debate over the effectiveness of the technology.
Mr Cook last month formally opened Acciona’s new $700m-plus Kwinana Energy Recovery facility in Perth’s south, the first such facility of its kind in the country. The technology has been used extensively in Europe and other nations for decades, but has long been under scrutiny over its projected carbon footprint and potential impact on community health.
Advocates for the industry tout it as a solution to Australia’s landfill woes that also delivers a net decrease in carbon emissions. Critics argue that the technology’s emissions benefits are overstated and say it could pose a risk to public health.
Proponents behind the Kwinana Energy Recovery facility – which will incinerate 460,000 tonnes a year of non-recyclable waste – say the emissions generated by burning the rubbish will be offset multiple times over by the amount of greenhouse gases that will be avoided as a result of that material not being sent to landfill. A life cycle analysis prepared for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency calculated that each MWh of energy would effectively save the equivalent of 0.86t of carbon dioxide emissions.
There has long been argument over just how much emissions are actually offset by the incineration process, and whether those estimates paint an accurate picture of the waste treatment alternatives.
Without the benefit of the estimated landfill offset, waste-to-energy ranks as one of the dirtiest forms of electricity.
An analysis of data on the project published by WA’s Environmental Authority and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency shows it will emit the equivalent of about 0.79t of CO2 for each megawatt hour of electricity it generates.
That compares to the 0.4t of CO2 equivalent per MWh by the nearby Kwinana gas-fired power station, according to the Clean Energy Regulator, and is only slightly less than the 0.83t of CO2 equivalent per MWh produced at the Kogan Creek power station in Queensland, which describes itself as one of Australia’s most efficient and advanced coal-fired power plants.
Acciona says it does not agree with that assessment, saying it “overlooks the environmental benefits of reducing the harmful landfill emissions achieved by diverting waste away from landfill and recovering valuable materials that can be reused and recycled”.
Sceptics of the industry argue that the environmental benefits of the technology are overstated.
Jane Bremmer, chair of Toxics Free Australia and a longtime critic of waste-to-energy incineration, says calculations used by the industry to estimate the net emissions footprint of the incinerators are misleading and assume the rubbish would be dumped without any of the waste sorting or controls mandated under state and federal laws.
Increased efforts to reduce the amounts of waste generated and better process materials before they enter landfill, she says, can deliver better environmental outcomes without any potential community impact from incinerators.
“Our entire waste management policy framework is about reducing the residual waste stream, and instead of investing in the infrastructure to do that, we’re investing in the infrastructure to hide it,” she said. “We’re investing in the most expensive, the most polluting way to hide the smallest fraction of our waste stream. It makes no sense.”
There has long been concern about the potential health impacts of incinerators on nearby communities. GP and Australian National University honorary clinical senior lecturer Peter Tait previously led research that found an association between proximity to incinerators and cancers and congenital abnormalities.
That research primarily involved older generation incinerators rather than modern facilities such as that as Kwinana, although he cautioned that it was still too soon to know whether newer incinerators would have any long-term health effects.
“One can say that there are risks to nearby populations of adverse health impacts from waste incinerators,” he told The Australian. “The thing is … we’re creating a lot of garbage; we do have to do something about our garbage, and it is attractive to state and other governments to say ‘We can burn it and that can generate heat which can make steam, which can make electricity’, and it sounds like a neat greenhouse gas-friendly way of doing it.
“The problem is that ultimately what comes out of the stack, as well as the heavy metals and all the nasty stuff, is also CO2 so it’s not really necessarily a greenhouse-friendly technology.”
Acciona, meanwhile, notes that the conditions imposed on the facility require it to remove recyclable content from construction and demolition wastes and prohibit it from accepting medical or hazardous waste.
“Kwinana Energy Recovery uses advanced technology, consistent with international best practice and utilised in modern facilities globally, to safely process all non-recyclable waste received at the facility, including a Continuous Emissions Monitoring System. We have both the CEMS calibrated and the emissions sampled independently and can demonstrate the emissions are below the safe limits set by the regulator,” a spokeswoman for the company said.
While waste to energy has found support in WA, it is a different story at a federal level.
Mr Bowen actively fought against plans for two incinerators in his electorate and has described the technology as “disgusting”.
“They claim they are clean energy. They are not clean energy, they are burning garbage. They are literally a dumpster fire,” he said back in 2020.
Since coming to power, the Albanese government has changed the mandates of both the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA to effectively discourage taxpayer support for the technology. ARENA previously committed $23m in taxpayer funds towards the Kwinana facility and another $18m to the nearby under-construction East Rockingham waste to energy plant.
The Kwinana and East Rockingham plants in WA are a beachhead for the industry in Australia.
Three facilities are proposed for development in Victoria.
The NSW government in 2022 introduced regulations banning the incinerators across the state, with the exception of four regional locations at Lithgow, Parkes, Goulburn-Mulwaree and Richmond Valley. Those regulations aimed to avoid locating facilities near densely populated areas due to “a greater risk of harm to human health”.
The ACT government in 2020 effectively banned the construction of waste to energy plants, instead opting to focus on waste reduction, reuse and recycling. The government’s review that informed the ban found deep community concerns about the technology and its potential impact on human health, the environment and climate change.
The UN Special Rapporteur on toxics, Marcos Orellana, has also expressed concerns about Australia’s push towards incinerators, warning after a 2023 visit here that “even the most modern incinerators impose heavy environmental and health costs”.
The Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia, however, says waste to energy is not a silver bullet but a critical part of the solution to landfill.
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