It has come to Mercia's attention that there is confusion in the public domain between EnviRecover's proposed energy recovery from waste rate and its efficiency rate and we would like to address this:
In our planning application, we have stated that the facility will recover energy from the combustion of waste by way of electricity and heat production. A proportion of this energy is classified as renewable energy - around 55-65%.
This is different to the facility's efficiency rate. In order to qualify as a Recovery Operation under the Waste Framework Directive, the plant needs to achieve an R1 efficiency of 0.65. This is not the same as an efficiency of 65%, as the formula takes account of the higher value of power compared to heat, by multiplying the power efficiency by 2.6 and the heat efficiency by 1.1. In the Environmental Permit application, we have implied a net efficiency (i.e power exported divided by heat in the waste) of 23.3%, which gives an R1 efficiency of 0.683.
