Shore Rd site is poor choice for incinerator

Sep 6 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

Dear Editor, – The planning application by Grundon for an energy recovery plant on the Shore Road does not appear to have considered the use of alternative sites for what is a major infrastructure development of strategic importance to this part of Scotland.

The proposal to have two sites, one at Shore Road, the other at an undisclosed location, does not make economic sense and, from a sustainability viewpoint, is a crazy solution.

The Shore Road site is a poor choice because it will incur extra costs that other locations will not have. It will require the building of a second plant to provide the prepared refuse-derived fuel. This will require additional costs of gaining planning approval, construction and a fleet of specialist vehicles to transport the fuel between the sites. Apart for the prison complex there is very little scope to use the low grade energy in other sites without the huge expenditure of laying pipes across Perth.

The holy grail of the design of the industrial plant is a co-location to minimise the double handling of materials and the loss of heat energy between pieces of plant. The Shore Road is quite the opposite. It will require additional energy to load and transport the 90,000 tonnes of material between the sites.

Shore Road is one of the lowest locations in Perth so it will require pumps to move hot water to where it might be used. Pumping water uphill uses considerable energy and incurs the cost of maintaining the pumps.

Should planning permission be granted it is foreseeable that it will never be built because it does not make sense to do so or it proves impossible to get permission for the second site. However the fact that permission exists will blight Shore Road for ever and be a disincentive for other light industry to locate to there. This light industry has the potential to provide far more jobs that this waste plant.

Alan Jones, Corsie Avenue, Perth.