Rotherham REC: Planning Permission Granted

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council officially made the determination on Wednesday 11th October, granting full planning permission. With consent achieved, the project team anticipate that the brand new REC will take approximately two years to build, following which an estimated six month commissioning and testing period will be required.

Rolton Group have initially provided geotechnical engineering support for this project, thoroughly investigating and reporting on this challenging brownfield site, providing advice and insight in support of the planning application developed by project developers Rolton Kilbride.

This ground-breaking facility located near the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, will comprise a gasification plant with equipment for energy recovery, associated site infrastructure including new vehicular access, an industrial warehouse for storage and distribution and appropriate landscaping.

The REC will recover energy from non-hazardous residual waste (the leftover product from other recycling processes – for example, essentially anything that can't be used ordinarily following kerbside collection recycling, other segregated collection systems and 'bring to' centres recycling, mechanical separation plant processing, etc.) through gasification, an efficient energy recovery system that uses synthetic gas to breakdown residual waste in a low oxygen environment.

The gasification process (classed as an Advanced Conversion Technology) will generate energy in the form of heat and electricity. This facility will be capable of processing 215,000 tonnes of waste every year in order to generate 23MW of electricity per hour. The thermal and electrical energy generated can benefit local consumers with any surplus power being routed to the national grid.

It is anticipated that this REC will create 42 new full time jobs for operators, maintenance technicians, engineers and managers. Experience on similar projects indicates that these people are most likely to locally, presenting new employment opportunities for the local community.