Frequently Asked Questions

A Resource Park is the gateway between generation of renewable energy, sustainable waste management and economically sustainable jobs for the local community. The principle is that waste materials arrive on site and only useful products leave, either in the form of material for recycling or as heat and electricity.

The Resource Park at Raynesway will take in waste materials from local commerce and industry to either recycle or generate heat and electricity for use locally. Waste materials that have not been subject to any sorting will be put through the Materials Recycling Facility where useful recyclate can be sorted and sent for reprocessing at paper mills, plastic factories, etc. Waste that has already been sorted will go to the Energy Generation Facility where electricity and hot water will be generated using a process called Gasification.

For more details see the 'How it works' section of the website.

There are a number of features that are required when considering the location of a Resource Park. The site should preferably have an industrial setting, the development needs to be close to its market, the site needs to be located in an area where there is an available skilled workforce and the location needs to comply with planning policy. Each of those points is looked at further below.

• Industrial setting

The Raynesway Resource Park is proposed to be developed on a circa 16 acre plot known as plot N on the Derby Commercial Park in East Raynesway. The site has a history of heavy industry for nearly one hundred years; being part of the British Cellulose Company Limited (now known as Celanese). This project will see the construction of a building that currently has consent on land that is in the process of remediation to be brought back into beneficial use. In addition to this the chosen location for the Resource Park (Plot N) will sit adjacent to a 200 Mega Watt Combined Cycle Gas fired Power Station (Derwent Co- Generation Limited) and the largest industrial user of electricity and heat in Derby (the remaining Celanese operation). This industrial backdrop provides a suitable setting against which to locate the Resource Park.

• Close to its Market

The Proximity Principle is a key factor in deciding on a site for a Resource Park. Locating a Resource Park close to where the raw materials will come from stops waste being transferred large distances and cuts greenhouse gases from transportation.

Derby is a large urban settlement within the East Midlands. As such it proportionately produces significant waste streams from the businesses that serve this population. Locating a facility in Raynesway stops waste being transferred out of the area for disposal, contributing to the reduction of greenhouses gases from transportation and by recycling and renewable energy production. Indeed, 20% of the throughput for the Resource Park is available within the Derby Commercial Park development and potential users of the power and heat/steam are also neighbours.

• Available Skilled Workforce

Raynesway Resource Park will need employees that reflect the full spectrum of employment with over 50% of the jobs of NVQ Level 2 standard and the average income being £1000 per annum over the average for Derby. The jobs from Phase 1 will include engineers, technicians and operations management staff. A key reason for selecting Raynesway for the development of a Resource Park is the availability of the workforce and the historical pre-disposition to manufacturing and engineering.

• Compliance with Planning Policy

A thorough review of current and impending planning policies for the region was undertaken when looking at the Raynesway site. Two significant points are worth noting.

First, in the 'Statement to assist Applicants in preparing Planning Applications for Waste Management Development' prepared by Derby and Derbyshire Councils, the Raynesway site has been identified as being suitable for proposals which include energy recovery and resource park development.

Secondly, Derbyshire, as every authority does, has a renewable energy target. This target is 224 Mega Watts of installed electric capacity. This development will have an installed electric capacity of 10 Mega Watts (50% which is classified as renewable), equivalent to 18% of the net remaining renewable energy target.

Bearing the above points in mind, it was decided to go ahead with the Planning Application on the site for a Resource Park.

For more details see 'Why Raynesway' section of the website.

Phase 1 of the development will see the Material Recycling Facility and the Energy Generation Facility constructed bringing a total of 53 jobs and over £1.25M of wages into the local economy. Jobs will range from administrative staff, MRF operatives, energy plant engineers and site managers.

As soon as Phase 1 is commissioned, Phase 2 – Area for Advanced Energy Production – will be opened. The plan for this area is currently at outline stage as the area of AEP will look to develop and implement at commercial scale current demonstrator sustainable and novel energy technologies.

The Raynesway Resource Park will be open for deliveries of waste and recyclate from 7am to 10pm in the week and 7am to 1pm on a Saturday. There will be no deliveries on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

The MRF will operate from 7am to 10pm in the week and 7am to 1pm on Saturdays. The MRF will not operate on Sundays or Bank Holidays.

The Energy Generation Facility will operate 24 hours a day to ensure a continuous supply of electricity to the local distribution network.

Deliveries will only be allowed between 7am and 10pm in the week and 7am and 1pm at weekends. It is anticipated that there will be less than 45 trucks per day averaging out at around 3 per hour.

All activities at the Raynesway Resource Park will take place inside the buildings. A noise assessment has been carried out that covers the nearest properties by our consultants and it found that the noise from the Resource Park would actually be less than the current background noise levels and, therefore, would not be heard at these properties.

Before the Resource Park can begin operation it will need an Environmental Permit (EP) issued by the Environment Agency. The EP sits alongside the Planning Permission as a regulatory control on the activities and operations at the Resource Park.

An Environmental Permit (EP) is a licence issued by the Environment Agency. You must have an EP to operate if you are:

• • An installation – one of more than 20,000 facilities carrying out the activities listed in Schedule 1 of the EP Regulations. These include activities in the energy, metals, minerals, chemicals and waste sectors.
• • A waste operation – any disposal or recovery of waste which is not exempt under the EP Regulations, or
• • A mobile plant – carrying out one of the above activities or waste operations.

The EP will usually have conditions of operation that the company must abide by. Permit conditions may comprise some or all of the following:

• • Conditions stipulating objectives or outcomes
• • Standards to mitigate a particular hazard / risk, or
• • Conditions addressing particular legislative requirements

The EP will list things like the waste types that can be accepted at the Resource Park, hours of operation, emission limits and reporting information back to the Environment Agency. The EP application to the EA will include an assessment of the environmental risk of the proposals including the risk under both normal and abnormal operating conditions. The EA should satisfy itself that the operator's assessment of the risk is sufficiently robust. In particular, any assumptions that the operator has made about its proposals must be clearly justified using Best Available Technology (BAT) assessments. The EP application has Best Available Technology (BAT) at its core. The reasons for choosing a particular process must be scrutinised using BAT and then show the reasoning and justification for choosing that process over other potential alternatives. The EA should then assess the application and the adequacy of the impact assessment including whether the control measures proposed by the operator are appropriate for mitigating the risks and their potential impact.

For waste management facilities the EA cannot issue a permit until planning permission for the activity has been given. Nevertheless, the EA actively encourage applicants to dual track the planning and EP applications so they can begin their formal considerations early on in the planning process.

A new application for an Environmental Permit (EP) has to be accepted by the Environment Agency as 'Duly Made' before the statutory consultation period can begin. 'Duly Made' status is when the Environment Agency are happy that they have enough information to be able to start the consultation phase, however, they may still ask questions about the application. The ‘Duly Made' status is an important milestone in the whole process of gaining the required permissions to open the Resource Park.

An Environmental Permit (EP) has a statutory minimum time period for determination. The EP cannot be given out in less than 4 months, however, if the Environment Agency require more information to be able to assess the EP application then the 'clock' stops until the information is received. Due to this the EP is more likely to take around 8 months.

All environmental impacts will be governed by the Environmental Permit that will be issued by the Environment Agency once they are satisfied that the Resource Park will comply with all relevant legislation and limits. Without this Environmental Permit the Resource Park cannot operate.

a. Air

Emissions to air are controlled by the EU Waste Incineration Directive that sets limits on 20 constituent parts of the flue gas from the process. These controls are the strictest of any power plants in the UK and are between 2 and 4 times tighter than a biomass power plant.

b. Water

There will be two distinct water flows on site – dirty water from washing down, etc. will go to foul sewer while rainwater will be collected from the car park and building roof and held in a sub-surface storage lagoon to give a steady flow into the drains to help stop any potential local flooding in heavy rainstorms.

Emission levels for the gasification plant are set by a European Directive. These emission limits are stricter than any other form of solid and liquid fuel combustion and energy generation despite having the same types of emissions. For the Planning application and the Environmental Permit application we must model the air emissions as if they were emitted at the maximum levels permitted by Europe. During operation, if the plant goes over the maximum levels permitted it must shut down within 4 hours, so modelling at these limits gives a worst case scenario for the regulators to assess the Resource Park against. It is expected that the gasification plant at the Resource Park will operate at less than 50% of the European limit values.

Thermal treatments for waste are one of the most strictly regulated industrial processes in Europe and are monitored closely in the UK by the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Energy from waste plants are today operating safely and efficiently across the UK and the rest of the world. Within the EU there are 425 ‘Energy from Waste' plants treating some 63 Million tonnes of waste each year.

Over the last ten years, detailed and reliable research studies, including those commissioned by the Government and Health Protection Agencies, have shown that there are no health risks associated with thermal waste treatments. The UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) has also issued a position statement on incineration of waste that looked at research carried out before the tighter EU legislative controls were introduced in 2002. In the paper they have looked at several studies including DEFRA's study on the health effects of waste management. Cancer, respiratory disease and birth defects were all considered, and no evidence has been found for a link between the incidence of the disease and the current generation of energy from waste plants. The HPA are a Government Agency set up to advise the NHS, Local Health Boards and Primary Care Trusts to give an integrated approach to health issues in the UK.

The document from the HPA can be seen here

As with the Planning Permission there is a statutory minimum time period that an Environmental Permit (EP) can be determined in for the Raynesway Resource Park proposal. This time period is 1 month for the local community to ask questions and 4 months for the local authority and Government bodies. It is during the 1 month public participation period that the local community can make representations and have their input as to how the Resource Park is run and what wastes it can accept.

The Raynesway Resource Park will be built using the highest quality materials and will be a mix of grey and blue to give it a modern contemporary feel to fit with the newer buildings in the Raynesway Industrial Area. Extra trees will also be planted so as to screen the development. See the photo montages and photo-realistic images for further information in the How it Looks section.

The site for the Resource Park was chosen due to its industrial heritage and the local industrial area surrounding it. The Resource Park will also be in a building that already has planning permission for industrial and warehouse uses, so no new additional buildings will be needed.

A comprehensive visual assessment has been carried out to assess the Resource Park's influence on the surrounding landscape and where the site might be seen from. To help with understanding of this and compare views with where you live please see the photo montages in the How it Looks section. The impact of this building has been deemed as negligible.

There will be a flue and it will be 50 metres high – the same or slightly lower than the flues at Derwent Cogen power station. The flue will be coloured grey and blue to blend with the skyline. The flue will be for the controlled emission of the cleaned exhaust from the electricity generating equipment.

The Raynesway Resource Park will produce 10MW of electricity – 80GWh per annum. This is enough to power more than 19,300 homes which is 21% of the homes in Derby.

The electricity will be connected to the local distribution network and will be used by local businesses and households. It will not need to go on the National Grid as there are enough users on the local network that can benefit from the renewable electricity.

The Renewables Obligation Order 2006 (and 2009) specifically includes Advanced Conversion Technologies as a renewable source of electricity generation. Advanced Conversion Technologies include gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion.

As of 1st April 2009 the use of waste to generate electricity using an Advanced Conversion Technology will count as 50% renewable energy. Ofgem (Electricity & Gas markets regulator) have 'deemed' that the biomass portion (considered renewable) of the waste would make up 50% of the calorific value of the syngas used as the fuel to generate electricity.

The Raynesway Resource Park will have an electricity generation rating of 10 MW, which is equivalent to 80 GWh per annum assuming a 91% capacity factor (uptime). However, the 'deeming' factor from Ofgem of 50% needs to be taken into account to give us the total renewable electricity generation giving a net renewable electricity production from the Resource Park of 40 GWh per annum. Therefore, the Raynesway Resource Park will satisfy circa 19% of the total target for renewable electricity generation in Derby.

The Raynesway Resource Park will sort and recycle good quality recyclate using the Materials Recycling Facility. Furthermore, the energy recovery facility is flexible enough to be able to use alternative materials (e.g. biomass) to generate electricity so will not be reliant on waste feedstock that could include valuable recyclable materials.

The Raynesway Resource Park uses the Waste Hierarchy principles to avoid undermining any preferred method of dealing with waste and more than 60% of the waste that goes through the MRF will be sorted and recycled where previously it would have been landfilled.

Gasification is a process that can take non-inert materials and converts the solid material to a gas that can be used in the same way as gas in the home for heating and hot water. Gasification has been used since the late 1800s for the production of town gas for street lighting and cooking in the home, so this is a tried and tested process over many, many years.

Gasification is a highly efficient process whereby virtually all the energy in the material being gasified is released into the gas and, therefore, a very efficient method of generating steam and electricity from waste materials. Waste types accepted for energy generation will be along the lines of packaging that is too contaminated for recycling, treated wood wastes, damaged and/or out of date food from supermarkets and other wastes that are too low in value to recycle.

While gasification and incineration are both thermal processes, it's important to point out the differences and the benefits of gasification.

Incineration is simply mass burn with relatively inefficient recovery of energy from the waste. The waste itself is the fuel in incineration. There is often in excess of 10 or 15% of the waste material left after going through the incineration process.

Gasification is a controlled sub-stoichiometric process that is used to turn waste materials into a gas. The gas is then used as a fuel to generate heat and power and because of this it is a far cleaner and efficient technology. In Germany they pump the gas from Advanced Conversion Technologies into their gas mains for use by households and industry. The gas from gasification can be used as a commodity in its own right, the waste is merely the resource to provide the gas.

The Resource Park will sort waste streams in the MRF that have not already been pre-treated rather than put them straight to the Energy Generation Facility. The recyclate that is removed from the residual waste stream for reprocessing back into new products would usually have been landfilled, so the Resource Park will maximise recycling from waste that would have been landfilled otherwise. Only non-recyclable or no value residual waste will be used in the Energy Generation Facility.

Composting has its place in managing waste, however, there is very little in commercial and industrial waste that would be compostable and what there is would be mixed in with all sorts of other materials making the end compost product too contaminated to be of any value. In addition, composting converts about 65% of the organic matter to CO2 with another 27% being released over 100 years if the compost is spread on land giving a 92% conversion to CO2. Furthermore, if compost is not turned to maintain its aerobic nature, significant quantities of methane would be generated which is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So, comparing compost with energy recovery is not as straightforward as it may first seem.

One of the pre-requisites for the technology chosen at the Raynesway Resource Park was flexibility. With waste targets and legislation pushing waste management ever further up the waste hierarchy, we could be in the situation where suitable waste for the gasification plant is just not around anymore due to better design and recycling. The flexibility of the gasification system that will be used is that the plant can be turned over to gasify forestry waste and other biomass to generate electricity, so the Resource Park will still be able to run and provide renewable heat and power. However, this will take time and so for the foreseeable future the Resource Park will provide two services – one to managing waste locally and one to provide renewable and low carbon heat and power for the local area.

In order for the Resource Park to fully close, the Environmental Permit must be handed back and accepted by the Environment Agency. An application to surrender the EP takes a minimum 3 months and this time is used to show the Agency that the land area that the permit applied to is no worse off than its original condition. This of course requires monitoring to be undertaken prior to building the facility so that comparisons can be made, but gives communities comfort knowing that their local area will not suffer detrimentally once the plant has closed.

Prior to submission of the Planning Application we submitted a Scoping Document to the City Council to ask what type of information we would need to cover and include in a Planning Application. This Scoping Document was then sent out to other groups asking for their input. The following stakeholders were consulted at this early stage –

• Derby City Council
• Planning Authority at DCC
• Highways Authority at DCC
• Economic Regeneration at DCC
• Pollution Control & Air Quality at DCC
• Archaeology Dept. at DCC
• Landscape Dept. at DCC
• Environment Agency
• Natural England

Other stakeholder groups were also contacted at the time the Planning Application was submitted such as Councillors, local community forums, local wildlife groups, neighbours to the site and the local media.

With such widespread use of the internet we have also decided to publish this web-site so that as many people as possible can access information on the proposal. By reading this web-site you are also being consulted and if you have any questions or you just want to stay informed then feel free to e-mail us using the form on the 'Contact Us' page or use the 'Stay Informed' box at the top of the page to enter your e-mail address for further updates.

We have committed to taking account of any constructive views and will take these on board and amend the proposal wherever possible.

Now that the Planning Application has been submitted to the City Council they will have to advertise in the local press that they have received it. There will then be a minimum 16 week period for the relevant stakeholders and the general public to pass any comments or recommendations if they want to. Also during this time the Council may ask for additional information from us covering the Application.

During this time period there will be an exhibition day for anyone to come along and see photos of the site as it is now and ask questions about the proposal. The date for this exhibition is 10th July 2009 and it will be held at 11.30am to 8pm at Pride Park Stadium.

In May we will be submitting the Environmental Permit application and this will cover off the operation and activities that will be carried out at the Resource Park including the permitted waste types. There is a Public Participation phase to the Environmental Permit application and this will be advertised on the Environment Agency website once the application has been submitted.