Ardley Against Incinerator wins

By Tim Bearder
BBC Oxford

Opposition of Ardley protesters

Campaigners have been fighting vehemently to stop the incinerator being built in Ardley.

They say that it will reduce air quality, increase traffic and reduce house prices in the area.

Oxfordshire County Council wished to incinerate about 300,000 tonnes of waste a year at Ardley.

But the council meeting rejected the authority's recommendations with a number of councillors concerned about the environmental impact.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Milliband speaking on BBC Oxford in July was frustrated by local opposition to wind farms on the Isle of Wight. He said: "We're making a billion pounds available through three British banks in order to speed up green projects... secondly we are speeding up the planning laws."

It seemed at the time that the political structures were going to be weighed against the Ardley campaigners as the Government introduced measures to overcome the local efforts that were stalling environmental initiatives.

Mr Milliband's own adviser is specific about the need for incinerators. Professor MacKay from Cambridge University is now the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate change. In his book Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, all of his five possible plans for reducing our carbon consumption include the scale up of municipal waste incineration.

Dangerous

His book assumes a ten-fold increase of incinerating power stations over those in 2008. Every town of 200,000 people will need a 10 MW waste-to-energy plant. This would mean at least three stations in Oxfordshire with its population of just over 600,000.

Professor McKay says people with concerns that the technology is not achievable on this scale or that it is dirty or dangerous should look to the continent: "Many countries in Europe incinerate far more waste per person than the UK; these incineration loving countries include Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland - not usually nations associated with hygiene problems!"

He also points out that waste incineration eliminates the worry of methane emissions from landfill sites. Methane is about 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Power stations like this produce energy which reduces the need for further consumption of fossil fuels.

Oxfordshire County Council already aims to increase the amount it recycles - currently 47% - to at least 55% annually, but it also seems committed to burning residual waste which comes from its kerbside collections.

On a day when the Prime Minister predicts that the UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, it would seem that the council has little alternative.

Whether or not this is an issue of Nimbyism seems to boil down to where you put your fence - around your backyard in a small corner of North Oxfordshire... or around the globe.

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