Scotgen plant similar to Dovesdale proposal is ready to produce electricity

Oct 6 2011 by Sandra Walls, Hamilton Advertiser

A waste-to-energy plant similar to the one proposed for Dovesdale is to start producing electricity two years after it first opened.

Scotgen, the company behind the gasification plant planned for Dovesdale, already have a facility at Dargavel Stores, Dumfries. The facility there has featured prominently in arguments during consideration of the Lanarkshire project.

However, the Dumfries plant which opened in 2009 has not yet produced any electricity from waste processed there.

The delay has led to criticism of the company and campaigners against the Dovesdale scheme have questioned whether the latter will ever produce energy.

However, Scotgen project director Lloyd Brotherton announced this week that their £20million facility at Dumfries will soon be ready to create electricity for the National Grid.

The Dumfries plant’s bosses say the company are replacing faulty boiler sections which have prevented the site from operating properly during the past couple of years.

Lloyd Brotherton, said: “The successful commissioning of the boilers will enable commercial steam to be produced and routed to the steam turbine and electricity generator for the first time since operations began in 2009.

“Scotgen anticipate steam generation some time towards the end of this year, with full activity being brought back to the site progressively throughout the first half of next year.”

The facility was the first of its kind in the UK when it was launched.

It is designed to take waste that cannot be recycled, with the capacity for up to 60,000 tonnes per year.

Spokesman for Dovesdale Action Group Gareth Jones, said: “In light of Scotgen’s appalling record at Dargavel, we are surprised that they have made a statement at all about what they hope to achieve with their latest upgrade.

“With a two-year commissioning phase and a catalogue of more than 600 operational breaches we hope that replacing two boilers will help them with all the other unrelated problems that they are having.

“The people of South Lanarkshire will be eagerly watching their progress, or lack of, with interest.”

Christina McKelvie, MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, which includes the Dovesdale site, said this week: “The claimed capacity or otherwise of Scotgen’s Dumfries plant to produce electricity doesn’t have any particular bearing on the Dovesdale issue, in my view.

“The primary objection to the use of the Dovesdale site has always been that this greenbelt site, in the middle of an area whose economy relies heavily on its reputation for top-quality fresh food produce, is an inappropriate location for a plant which uses incineration as part of its operations.

“Where the Dumfries plant is germane to the Dovesdale issue is in the huge number of breaches of SEPA conditions that it has incurred since it opened – over 900 in total.

“That certainly raises serious concerns about Scotgen’s ability to operate a waste to energy plant of this type without significant impact on the local environment, and that is why I will shortly be having discussions with the Cabinet Secretary and SEPA’s chief executive about precisely this matter.”