£917m Recycling Scheme announced for Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire County Council members will today be asked to back a £917m recycling scheme aimed at helping the county to meet new recycling targets over the next 28 years.

The plan includes building an ‘Energy from Waste’ unit - a combined heat and power plant to generate electricity for sale to the national grid and heat in the form of steam for sale locally.

A report prepared for the meeting said: “The new directive requires that the council significantly reduces the amount of biodegradable waste that it landfills, which means that the council must find an alternative solution.”

The report said the plant would take three years to build and would operate for 25 years, using waste that remained after recycling to create energy for sale.

The total cost of running the plant and other waste services would be £917m over the 28 years but only £625m had been budgeted for.

There might be some funding from Defra and income should come from the sale of electricity, but that still left a potential shortfall estimated to be between £185m and £323m – referred to as the ‘affordability gap’.

Councillors will today be recommended to agree to ‘increasing funding over the 28-year period to bridge this gap’.