Danish firm to invest €1bn in Poolbeg incinerator

A €1 billion deal between Danish firm Elsam Engineering and Dublin City Council to build and run the Poolbeg incinerator in Dublin will be announced next month, The Irish Times has learned.

Under the deal's terms Elsam will design, build, finance and operate the incinerator for 20 years, carrying all the construction and operation costs.

Its investment - which it has put at €1 billion over the period - will be recouped by "gate charges" for waste and sales of energy recovered from the incineration process.

The public-private partnership will involve the city council providing the site - but not finance - for the project. The council has selected Elsam as its partner in the project and formal approval from Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is expected early next month.

Elsam is an international engineering company specialising in energy and environment projects. Its headquarters are in Denmark with a subsidiary in Poland and its projects are worldwide.

Its recent schemes have included "Line 6" - an extension to Europe's largest incinerator at Vestforbraending in Denmark and a wind farm off the Kentish coast in Britain. It is to set up an Irish subsidiary, Elsam Ireland, to complete the Poolbeg project.

The Vestforbraending incinerator can process 500,000 tonnes of waste per year with Line 6 able to process most of this at 35 tonnes of waste per hour. The facility was officially opened by Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik last May.

While the construction time for the Poolbeg incinerator is expected to be two years, Dublin City Council is not confident of the plant opening before 2010 at the earliest.

The venture's timetable involves Elsam preparing an Environmental Impact Assessment which would take a minimum of six months to complete. The planning process is likely to take about two years and the city council expects the plan to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Dublin city and county will run out of landfill space in December 2007. A new landfill site for Dublin, in the townland of Nevitt in the north of the county, has been approved by Fingal County Council, but is unlikely to open before 2009 at best.

In the intervening period the region will seek facilities in surrounding counties, possibly including the incinerator proposed by Indaver Ireland for a site near Duleek in Co Meath.

The Poolbeg incinerator would also have to be licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Indaver Ireland has invested 12 years in seeking statutory consents for its two planned facilities, the Co Meath incinerator and another proposed for Ringaskiddy in Cork Harbour.

Dublin City Council originally proposed the thermal treatment plant in its 1998 Waste Management Plan.

City councillors and locals in Ringsend have made many attempts to stop the incinerator going ahead and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, a local TD, has pledged support for opponents of the scheme.

A Bill to establish a new, faster planning process for critical infrastructure, brought forward by former minister for the environment Martin Cullen, was withdrawn by Mr Roche.

The Bill came out of a Government commitment in 2003 to end delays to major road and infrastructure projects which the planning process was, in part, held responsible for.

Mr Roche is finalising proposals to create a new division of An Bord Pleanála which will deal with major infrastructural projects.