Truth behind abandoned £23 million Borders waste project

EXCLUSIVE by EWAN LAMB

Leading members of Scottish Borders Council continued to put a positive public spin on a planned £23 million waste treatment centre on the outskirts of Galashiels during October 2014 even though the project remained entirely unfunded while contractors were unable to make their embryonic technology perform satisfactorily.

But though council leaders remained convinced the "state of the art" facility which was designed to convert household waste into energy would actually materialise, behind the scenes a very different situation had already developed.

The combination of factors which resulted in the entire project being abandoned just four months later in February 2015 have been disclosed for the first time following the release of a large collection of commercially sensitive documents which had been inaccessible under a six-year confidentiality agreement signed by SBC and New Earth Solutions Group (NESG) in 2015.

The paperwork shows how councillors granted New Earth a six-month 'moratorium' - despite the project already being behind schedule - from February to October 2014 to see if the company could resolve its funding and technology issues. But at the end of the six months the state of the scheme was "significantly weaker" than when the original deal was signed in 2011, according to the documents.

A revised project with completion pushed back to 2017 included the incorporation of the so-called New Earth Advanced Thermal (NEAT) gasification technology to convert waste into electricity.

This conversion technique was still being trialled by NES at its Avonmouth plant, near Bristol where a large deputation of elected members and officers from SBC made a site visit in October 2014,

An article published by the waste management trade magazine Let's Recycle that same month revealed a further delay to the Borders plans.

But Councillor David Paterson, executive member for environmental services, told letsrecycle.com that the Galashiels plant would implement the technology on a ‘smaller-scale’ than in Avonmouth, which he visited as part of a 16-strong delegation to the site earlier this month.

And Councillor Paterson added that the live demonstration of the technology had been ‘very informative’ and an ‘insight into what we could have in the Borders’.

Meanwhile council leader Councillor David Parker said the Avonmouth visit was “valuable and illuminating”.

“The integrated WTF [waste treatment facility] is a really big deal for our council as it will transform the way we deal with our waste and help us comply with our zero waste obligations,” he told the Border Telegraph following the Avonmouth trip.

However, a report compiled after the six-month standstill concluded: "Overall, the project team do not believe that NES have submitted satisfactory proposals following the moratorium period. The financial proposals are significantly weaker than submitted at contract signature, without a ‘funder of last resort’ and the marginality of the financial model is a major concern if NES wish to obtain financial close without a change to the gate fee [the cost of treating the waste].

And the newly released report on which the council decided to abandon the entire £80 million 24-year deal with NES also reveals that many of the goals set by the company had not been met. It states: "During the moratorium period NES did not achieve all of the targets set out and out of 30 tasks: only 15 tasks were 100% complete, 5 tasks were between 20-80% complete and the remaining 10 tasks had not started.

"Three of the major tasks that were not complete during the moratorium were the testing of the gas engine on full load, the installation and commissioning of the gasifier and the continuous operation of the syngas clean-up for 120 hours (100 hour test have been recorded subsequently). This delivery performance aligns with previous experience of the Research & Development plant, where, although progress has been made New Earth Solutions have not fully met their own expectations of technology development."

NES executives remained convinced the NEAT technology would become commercially viable, given time and further work at their R&D facility.

FOOTNOTE: The NEAT system merits a brief mention in a technical paper recently published by the UK Government's Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The publication is called Advanced Gasification Technologies – Review and Benchmarking Review of current status of advanced gasification technologies Task 2 report BEIS Research Paper Number 2021/038 – Oct.2021.

Here is the NEAT entry in full which can be found at Page 151:

"New Earth Advanced Thermal technology description New Earth Advanced Thermal (NEAT) gasification system is a modular air-blown system. Each module has a thermal input capacity of 4.2 MWth. According to NEAT the process can be fired on biomass or waste feedstocks. The syngas produced is burnt in a combustor to raise steam for generation of electricity in a steam turbine.

"Reference plants - NEAT had a single operational reference plant at Avonmouth, UK which was closed in 2016.

"Conclusion - New Earth became insolvent in 2016 and the NEAT gasifier was discontinued. The NEAT process has not been proven and will not be considered in any further detail in this study."