Burning household rubbish now UK’s dirtiest form of power, BBC finds

The challenge is that even if local authorities wanted to move away from the use of energy-from-waste plants they are often unable to due to restrictive, long-term contracts.

The BBC made Freedom of Information requests to every UK local authority responsible for disposing of waste, which revealed that they have at least £30bn-worth of contracts with waste operators involving incinerators, some lasting more than 20 years.

These arrangements have been criticised by the House of Commons public accounts committee for locking councils into financially burdensome arrangements.

Dr Colin Church, who led an independent review of incineration for the Scottish government which resulted in the ban, said: “‘Lock-in’ is a real issue, the energy-from-waste sector swears blind it’s not, but it is.”

In 2019, Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council terminated their contract with waste company RRS because an incinerator it had built for them did not pass initial tests, with residents complaining about the smell and noise.

Although the plant had never been used, the councils were were ordered to pay £93.5m in compensation to RRS’s administrators for terminating the contract early.

The BBC also found that dozens of councils had clauses in their contracts which demand a minimum amount of waste to be sent to incinerators for burning – known in the industry as “deliver or pay”.

In 2010, Stoke-on-Trent Council was left facing a £329,000 claim from Hanford Waste Services for not sending enough waste to be incinerated.

The council declined to say if it paid the claim but told us the clause has since been removed from its contracts with the operator.