The Benefits of Decentralised Energy from Waste

The circular economy principles and the guidelines for new Energy from Waste plants adopted by the UK and Europe, drive us towards the utilisation of the energy that can be recovered from non-recyclable wastes. These are materials that can’t be recycled and are typically sent to landfill or incinerated where the energy that is embedded in these materials is lost forever.

Traditional large-scale incinerators are typically sited a long way from the waste producers and energy consumers. These plants are primarily used to dispose of the waste with little consideration for the energy that could be captured from these systems. Where electricity is generated to feed the grid, the thermal energy that is produced as a by-product of the electricity generation is lost because the plants are miles away from the heat users.

Tidy Planet’s smaller decentralised Energy from Waste plants can be sited closer to waste producers and energy consumers, minimising the transportation of the waste and making it possible for homes and businesses to benefit from the electricity and more importantly the heat that is produced as a by-product of the electricity generation.

The decentralised and local approach ensures that the non-recyclable wastes are processed in a clean and sustainable manner and more importantly, the people who have produced the wates can directly benefit from the energy that is recovered from these wastes that would otherwise be lost in a landfill or exported abroad for others to benefit from.

The electricity can also be used to power electric vehicles or to produce Hydrogen to fuel buses and refuse collection vehicles at night when domestic and industrial electricity consumption is lower.

Non-recyclable materials generated through the collection and processing of mixed wastes results in RDF and SRF, which are becoming increasingly expensive to dispose of. With the global reluctance to accept import of other countries’, the options for disposal continue to decrease, while costs increase.

RDF and SRF have a high-energy value as fuels and can be processed and combusted cleanly and efficiently within the UK and UE Industrial Emission Directive (IED) and the Waste Incineration BAT guidelines (WI BREF).

Tidy Planet and its world leading industrial partners, Sugimat and Turboden, offer a proven and guaranteed solution to turn your waste into energy, in the form of head and electricity for use on – or exported from – your site to the grid. We offer a full turnkey solution with performance that guarantees you can be generating income in as little as 12 months from order.