No to a massive incinerator at RoS (Oct 2020)

At long last the coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe on Soar will have to shut down by 2025. The bad news is that operator Uniper wants to replace it with a large waste incinerator.

The County Council will soon decide whether to give planning permission. Formal consultation ended in September. But objections can still be sent to development.management@nottscc.gov.uk quoting reference ES/4154.

Some reasons to object:

• Burning 500,000 tonnes p.a. waste will emit more than 450,000 tonnes carbon dioxide. On Uniper's own figures that will be more than 1kg CO₂ per kWh electricity exported to the grid - worse than burning coal!
• The emphasis should be on meeting the County's target to recycle or compost 70% of waste by 2025. Uniper wants to abandon this target and burn large amounts of waste instead.
• Ratcliffe on Soar is miles away from the main urban areas where most waste is generated - requiring waste to be trucked across the greenbelt.

It should be said that redevelopment of the RoS site is part of grandiose plans for an East Midlands Development Corporation. In 2018 Robert Jenrick (MP for Newark) went to the top of the control tower at East Midlands Airport and declared plans for a freeport in the surrounding area - which would take decisions out of the hands of local councils. Mr Jenrick was then a Treasury Minister. Now he is Communities Secretary - responsible for weakening the planning system to allow big business to ride roughshod over local democracy (for details on that see Friends of the Earth website).

There is a campaign group on Facebook - Breathless in Nottingham.

Uniper's diagrammatic representation of their proposed incinerator.