PROJECT BENEFITS

Project Benefits

The project offers a wide range of environmental, economic and social benefits.

Contribute to environmental protection and climate resilience by:

• Providing a sustainable long-term solution for the management of residual black bin waste in the six NI councils that make up the arc21 area. The current costs to ratepayers of landfilling and exporting residual waste will be redirected to deliver a more sustainable solution with many local benefits
• Diverting up to 250,000 tonnes of municipal waste from landfill or the need to export it per year, helping to meet Circular Economy and bet zero carbon targets
• Increasing overall recycling rates through the extraction of plastics, metals, aggregates and other valuable materials
• Helping Northern Ireland become less reliant on imported fossil fuels and combating climate change
• Helping Northern Ireland to end the reliance on volatile waste export markets and to become more self sufficient in challenging geo-political climate.
• Providing over 50,000 MWh per year towards Northern Ireland’s renewable energy targets
• Contributing towards Northern Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions targets by the reduction of approximately 57,500 tonnes CO2 equivalent per year relative to sending waste to landfill

Contribute to the economy by:

• Contributing a total investment of £250 million to the Northern Ireland economy which will result in a publicly owned asset
• Enhancing Northern Ireland’s security of energy supply and increasing diversity of energy production by exporting 18 MW electricity to the National Grid – enough to power 30,000 homes
• Contributing to a low carbon economy by offering the potential to export up to 10MW heat to future commercial, industrial or residential users nearby
• Contributing to the green recovery by enabling other decarbonisation technologies such as hydrogen fuel production, district heating, energy storage etc.
• Creating approximately 455 direct jobs at peak construction and support a significant number of additional jobs in the supply chain
• Creating/sustaining 337 direct and indirect jobs annually during the operational phase
• Boosting the local economy during the construction phase by creating and sustaining direct and indirect jobs generating £122 million in total wages and £215 million of Gross Value Added (GVA) to the Northern Ireland economy (1)

(1) Oxford Economics Review of the economic impact study of arc21 residual waste treatment project
http://becon.co.uk/assets/pdfs/Appendix-12.1-Oxford-Economics.pdf
Bring social benefits such as:

• Providing a community benefit fund for the local area to ensure the host community benefits directly from the project
• Providing improvements to the road network in the immediate vicinity of the site
• Including a visitor centre for educational and community use

Main Points at a glance

• £250m initial capital investment in public infrastructure
• Diverting up to 250,000 tonnes of waste from landfill or export per year
• Supplying 18MW of electricity to National grid – enough to supply over 30,000 homes.

Similar facilities in Europe