Learn more about SIRRL, its 60% overseas ownership and the NZ company behind ‘Project Kea’ Renew Energy Limited (REL)
Native bird conservation or mass-scale rubbish incineration? don’t let the greenwashing fool you.
Hundreds of kilometres from the waste source, population, & infrastructure, what’s the real reason for choosing Waimate?
PROJECT KEA - A Rubbish Idea
Gather 365,000 tonnes of waste destined for landfill from around the South Island each year, truck it to Waimate, incinerate it and create electricity in the process, all the while creating jobs and economic benefits for the local community. In the words of Waimate mayor Craig Rowley, “Sounds too good to be true”. But is it needed? Is it safe? Is it a solution or part of the problem?
Learn more about Project Kea below.
What is Waste to Energy?
As the name suggests, waste-to-energy (W-t-E) is the process of using rubbish to create energy. There are several forms of W-t-E, including pyrolysis, gasification, incineration, and landfill gas capture. Project Kea will use moving grate technology to incinerate waste at high temperatures to create steam. The steam is then harnessed to create electricity via a turbine.
How do W-t-E companies make money?
The economic incentives for W-t-E are based on the principle of charging a gate fee to take the waste and dispose of it by incineration. The company then receives revenue from generating and selling electricity and, in some cases, from selling steam for external industry or central heating requirements.
W-t-E companies can also generate revenue by extracting the recyclable metals contained within the resulting bottom ash, although external operators often perform this process.
In many cases, W-t-E companies receive subsidies and tax rebates by qualifying as renewable energy generators. This renewable status is achieved because of the organic content in waste.
There is a significant global shift towards removing organic content from waste, which accounts for up to 50% of the waste disposed of each year. This shift is driven by the fact that organic waste, if not captured and harnessed, creates methane gas as it breaks down, a potent greenhouse gas that is released into the atmosphere.
By removing the compostable green waste and recyclable material from the waste, the remaining renewable content, which comprises non-recyclable paper and non-compostable green waste, is reduced to around 22%.
What will Project Kea burn?
SIRRL claims they will burn only residual waste, the waste left after sorting and recycling, or all the waste from your red bin. They also state that 50% of the waste to be used as fuel will come from construction and demolition waste. All the rubbish will be collected from Christchurch (71%), Dunedin (15%), and Central Otago (14%). The rubbish will be transport to the site resulting in 136 heavy truck and trailer movements daily, 365 days a year.
Read below for more information about what Project Kea will burn and where that waste will come from.
What goes in, must come out!
Toxic residues – Dioxins – Furans – Heavy Metals – Particulates – Ash
Burning waste creates hundreds of toxic emissions, some extremely poisonous. These include dioxins, furans, heavy metals, particles, and toxic ash. These by-products are known to harm human, animal and environmental health. Pollution control technology is employed to try and mitigate emissions produced in the combustion process. W-t-E companies worldwide use different technologies to meet hugely differing regulatory standards.
It’s important to understand that no W-t-E plant currently operating can remove 100% of these toxins. Instead, these plants are regulated to adhere to what regulators consider ‘acceptable’ outputs.
Dioxins, furans, and heavy metals bioaccumulate in the environment. This means that even if released at so-called acceptable standards, the accumulative effects result in toxins reaching dangerous levels. This also means that animals towards the top of the food chain accumulate much higher dioxin levels.
Read more about W-t-E residues and their health dangers below.
WHY WAIMATE?
If 71% of the waste is coming from Christchurch why not build it there?
SIRRL director Paul Taylor stated that Waimate was chosen for its “perfect location,” but history shows that Waimate was not the company’s first choice, not even their second choice.
Previous proposals by the same proponents in Westport and Hokitika imploded dramatically and stood to highlight just how this company targets small, under-resourced communities with their rubbish ideas.
Learn more about Renew Energy (the New Zealand shareholder of SIRRL) and their previous failed proposals below.
'Waimate in the running for $350 million energy plant.'
This Timaru Herald headline was the public introduction to the Waimate incinerator proposal called Project Kea. The article included a supporting statement from Mayor Craig Rowley stating that it was an exciting proposal that could create many benefits for the district.
“This would include new employment opportunities and is yet another example of the district’s appeal to commercial operators. This initiative has yet to go through the required consenting process, but we know the growth these major enterprises can create, and that’s a big positive for the Waimate District.”
Project Kea - Information sessions - public consultation?
SIRRL came to Waimate in September 2021 to provide two information-sharing sessions about Project Kea. These sessions at the Waimate Event Centre provided a brief overview of waste-to-energy (W-t-E). Glossy brochures with promotional material touting the employment and economic opportunities this venture would bring Waimate were on hand, along with a few representatives to answer questions.
WHAT WE WERE TOLD:
- There was no need to be concerned about emissions, as they would be mitigated using a 7-step flue gas treatment process that would outperform Europe’s current best practice methods.
- Any emissions would be well below the most stringent requirements in Europe.
- Any remaining emissions would be monitored in real time, with results available to the public 24/7. “Would we do that if we had something to hide?” Paul Taylor, SIRRL director.
- The only visible emissions exiting the stack would be water vapour.
- We were told that we shouldn’t be concerned about toxic fly ash, as it would be vitrified using the latest technology and turned into an inert slag for use as construction and roading material.
- We were also told concerns regarding dioxin release from incineration plants were a thing of the past and no longer an issue.
- The plant will not smell, as the plant design will ensure negative pressure within the building, drawing any odour into the furnace, where it will be destroyed.
- Any noise will be below regulated standards.
A pitch full of shiny embellishments
- Jobs
- Economic growth
- Renewable energy
- The solution to what SIRRL calls a “landfill crisis.”
- Recover and recycle 7,000 tonnes of metal
- Provide CO2 to neighbouring glasshouses for horticulture.
- Provide neighbouring industries with energy to offset coal-fired boilers.
- Rail siding to offset road transport.
- Use excess generated electricity to produce hydrogen.
There was plenty of greenwashing and euro washing, with next to no mention of Chinese ownership, Chinese-owned technology, or Chinese funding behind Project Kea. There was no evidence that any plant owned and operated by the Chinese shareholder company CNTY could deliver any of the above claims.
Just how will all these bold claims be delivered?
When further questions were asked about the proposal, representatives’ responses were found to be less than adequate and, in most cases, unanswered.
Questions were raised at these information sessions, which resulted in some attendees being taken to a side room away from the public eye.
Questions including;
- Where was the plant to be located
- Feeder fuel
- Truck movements
- How many jobs and roles
- Why Waimate
- Previous proposals
- History of the NZ shareholder company Renew Energy Limited.
People were also told to visit the Project Kea website to answer any further questions, with a dedicated section for the ‘Waimate community.’
The Project Kea website.
The Project Kea website did contain more information, with a Q&A page supposedly prompted by community feedback. It is a little bewildering how the company could source feedback from a community that hadn’t received any information about the proposal before that point.
However, the website mainly contained promotional material and references to W-t-E plants in Europe with adorning ski slopes but very little information about the Waimate proposal.
The website stated that the company would return to Waimate to answer more specific questions about the plant before lodging a resource consent application.
The Project Kea website and the September 2021 information sessions were all the Waimate community had to learn about this proposal until a resource consent application was lodged in October 2022.
The lodgement of the Project Kea resource consent application highlighted how the website had provided misleading statements, inflated figures, and incorrect facts about Project Kea.
The forming of Why Waste Waimate and the constant requests to SIRRL for more information.
Why Waste Waimate Inc. (WWW) was formed in October 2021. The group was a response to community concerns raised after attending the information sessions in September 2021. Why Waste Waimate had many questions about the Project Kea proposal, and from October 2021 until October 2022, when SIRRL lodged a resource consent application, WWW frequently requested SIRRL to honour their word and return to Waimate to answer questions.
These requests fell on deaf ears, and it wasn’t until March 2023, some 18 months later, that the company finally returned to Waimate.
Company offer Glenavy school access to $50,000 fund
In April 2022, SIRRL released a media statement stating that land had been purchased to site Project Kea in Glenavy/Waimate within 2.5 km of the Glenavy township. Soon after, the Glenavy school publicly raised concerns about Project Kea in a Timaru Herald article.
Within a few days of the article, SIRRL director Paul Taylor travelled to Glenavy and met with the Glenavy school board. In this meeting, Mr Taylor offered the school access to a $50,000 community grant to be funded by the company. Before the school meeting, WWW had made numerous public prompts to get SIRRL to return to Waimate with more information.
Public relations firm Convergence.
Public relations firm Convergence has been employed by SIRRL since about July 2021. OIA material showed that the PR firm was heavily involved with Waimate District Council staff in the lead-up to the Project Kea rollout some months before the public release. This involved requesting a supporting statement from the mayor, a list of the town’s “key influencers,” and the setting up and maintaining the Project Kea website. The Waimate Mayor and CEO support manager even provided a company brief of the proposal via a Zoom meeting with National MP Jacqui Dean while in COVID lockdown.
The involvement of this PR firm has not been beneficial to public consultation. WWW believes the PR spin has been used to manipulate the Waimate community.
Actual community consultation might have taken the role of leasing an empty shop in the main street of Waimate with the purpose of continued consultation with the community, talking with people and being active within the wider community, not just targeting the towns ‘key influencers’
Any community consultation has been only at the company’s discretion; they have withheld important information and have yet to address community concerns. According to Waimate District Council’s CE, Stuart Duncan, WDC, was told by SIRRL that the company intended to lease premises in Waimate long-term for transparent public consultation, sadly it never happened.
Learn more about Public Relations firm Convergence below.
Control The Narrative.
Through the use of misinformation, greenwashing, inflated figures, and exploited misconceptions, SIRRL has been able to achieve some support for its proposal.
Promotional material stating that the only visible emissions exiting the stack will be water vapour gives the reader the impression that there will be no emissions other than water vapour, which is entirely untrue. The company also promotes incineration against historic landfilling practices that predate the formation of the Resource Management Act. Using historic unregulated landfills to compare against is again misleading, as it suggests that WtE releases less climate-altering emissions than modern landfills utilising modern gas capture technology.
SIRRL has attempted to embellish its proposal with a range of ‘could do’s’. These include carbon capture technology for the horticulture and beverage industries, reuse of ash as aggregates, hydrogen production from excess electricity, and a rail siding for waste transport. However, these are not part of the resource consent for the incinerator. They are merely greenwashing tactics to distract from the proposal’s lack of merit.
SIRRL has also inflated figures that misrepresent the viability of its proposal. These include suggesting that the plant will produce renewable energy and providing misleading waste availability figures in the South Island to feed the plant.
SIRRL suggests that the plant will produce copious amounts of electricity, enough to power tens of thousands of homes, implying that the company intends to provide the local community with electricity. However, any limited electricity generated by the plant is intended for other purposes, including the running of the facility.
The company has also continued to provide inflated aggregate and metal recovery figures to endorse its proposal despite providing resource consent data that contradicts these figures.
The company also states that all emissions will be monitored in real-time, saying, “Would we do that if we had something to hide? “However, only a handful of the hundreds of emissions produced by the plant will be monitored. Furthermore, the most dangerous toxic emissions produced by the plant will only be sampled and tested every 3-12 months, not in real-time, as stated.
Waimate Doctors collectively condemn "Waste to Poisons Plant"
The lodgement of the Project Kea resource consent in September 2022 resulted in the Waimate doctors publicly labelling Project Kea a “Waste to Poison’s plant.” The doctors raised concerns about toxic emissions and their potential impacts on community health.
Again, SIRRL’s public relations machine ignited action. A subsequent online meeting with the doctors resulted in some minor changes to the proposal. However, many of the doctors’ concerns were either totally ignored or dodged.
The return of SIRRL to Waimate the following March was the perfect opportunity for the company to address the doctors concerns and quell community anguish; after all, the doctors had publicly labelled the plant a severe health risk.
SIRRL returned to Waimate with two company directors, one of whom was a self-proclaimed W-t-E expert who touted a very different and somewhat irrelevant European W-t-E model. Also attending was a representative from Babbage Consulting, overseeing the Project Kea resource consent, and a public relations representative whose only noticeable role was to take notes for a carefully chosen suite of questions and answers later posted on the Project Kea website. The presence of a representative from a high-profile public relations firm was given more importance than bringing along a doctor to address public health concerns.
Public registration for information sessions
When the company announced plans to return to Waimate for more information-sharing sessions in March 2023, it stated that this would require any attendees to first register with their full name and email address. This was perceived to be an attempt to screen participants and deter any individuals who might want to show any opposition to the proposal. This was outside the spirit of open community engagement and was seen as a deliberate attempt to manipulate the consultation process further.
Lack of cultural engagement
Waimate District Council and Environment Canterbury returned the Project Kea resource consent application lodged in September 2022 due to a “fundamental lack of information.” This included the exclusion of a cultural impact assessment report (CIA).
SIRRL re-lodged their application in November 2022, again without a site-specific CIA. Instead, the company gleaned a historic CIA from Oceania Dairy Company’s unrelated proposal to discharge wastewater into the ocean. SIRRL’s justification for using the CIA was that the Oceania proposal did not highlight any negative cultural impacts on Runanga.
If companies behind proposals like these were responsible for providing their own CIA, there would unlikely be any perceived negative impacts. This is another example of the company’s lack of community engagement, showing their intention only to do what they feel is required.
FREQUENTLY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Despite company-delivered information sessions and a promotional website, many questions still need to be answered.
- Why truck hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste each year, hundreds of kilometres away from the waste source, burn it and truck the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ash produced hundreds of kilometres to landfill it?
- Burn waste to create a fraction of the energy used to produce it when better alternatives are already in place to deal with most of the waste.
- Incinerate waste producing emissions and toxic by-products that require further mitigation, destroying vast amounts of resources in the process.
- Why choose a site within a flood zone with a long history of flooding to place a substantial contaminating industry that will threaten the future of a district renowned for its food production?
- Why site this plant hundreds of kilometres away from the primary waste source, population base, and infrastructure required to support it?
- Why site this plant within 2.5 kilometres of a township and school, with prevailing NE winds taking any emissions directly over the town?
- Why is the company claiming it intends to provide energy to existing neighbouring industries to offset its coal-fired emissions when SIRRL has confirmed it has no agreement in place with Oceania, the only neighbouring industry to the proposed site?
- The company now states that it will landfill the 100,000 tonnes of ash produced each year. However, it refuses to state where it will dispose of this toxic waste ash.
- The company claims it will monitor emissions in real time; however, the resource consent application states that only sample testing of dioxins, furans, and heavy metals will take place. They fail to state whether these sample test results will be available to the public.
- Provide jobs for locals—100 plus a further 200 if adjacent glasshouses are built. Where are these staff going to come from? Waimate is struggling to fill available positions now, and there is also a shortage of available accommodation in the Waimate district.
The pitch versus reality
What Waimate was told for 18 months through the Project Kea website, public relations, local media, and ‘key influencers’ in an attempt to target the community and sell this proposal turned out to be very different from what was contained in the company’s actual resource consent application.
In the interactive table below we compare the company’s pitch with the actual truth.
REALITY: Current regulations in NZ don’t allow this. Bottom or grate ash is reused to a certain degree in some European countries. However, bottom ash is toxic, and these toxins would leach out into the environment if the ash was not suitably processed first. The best practice in Europe is to wash and mature the ash before regulations allow its reuse or even landfilling. Learn more HERE.
SIRRL’S resource consent states that they will landfill the 80,000 tonnes of toxic bottom/grate ash produced annually without processing it. The company refuses to provide a disposal location for the ash, only that they intend to landfill it. SIRRL also states that they will treat the 20,000 tonnes per annum of extremely toxic fly ash with plasma furnace vitrification before also landfilling it. The company does state that its future intention for the vitrified fly ash and bottom ash is to use it as a roading and construction material, however, the company’s resource consent states that the entire 100,000 tonnes of ash produced annually will be landfilled. If Project Kea does receive consent to build and operate, will we then see a resource consent to bury 100,000 tonnes of ash annually in the Waimate District?
REALITY: Between the main trunk railway line and the proposed Project Kea site is an open irrigation channel running the length of the site. This channel is sited on Morven Glenavy Ikawai irrigation company (MGI) owned land. Any rail siding would need to be built over this channel on land acquired through a commercial lease. This would be hugely expensive, and the company would not own any building investment. Transporting waste to the site via an extra 136 heavy truck and trailer movements daily on already poor-quality roads is not a popular prospect for locals; how do you mitigate that? Tell the community you intend to use rail. Fonterra and Oceania Dairy factories said they would put in rail sidings. Still, it has yet to happen and Why Waste Waimate believe it is not likely to occur at the Project Kea incinerator either.
REALITY: The Oceania Dairy factory is the only industry neighbouring the proposed site. SIRRL directors Paul Taylor and Herman Sioen were recently asked if they had any agreements in place with Oceania; the answer was NO. SIRRL uses scenarios in their resource consent application to claim greenhouse gas emission advantages by supplying local industries with energy and offsetting current coal-fueled boilers. This claim is worthless without actual working agreements.
REALITY: Bruce Murphy from Murphy Farming, who has agreed to sell SIRRL the land for the incinerator, has stated this in a media release;
“Glasshouses need large amounts of energy and CO2, which can be provided by the new plant.
“This will allow us to diversify our production and potentially create up to another 200 jobs in food production,”
The reality is that there currently are no glasshouses in the area, and sequestering CO2 for food-grade applications is not that simple. WWW has been able to find only one example of a waste-to-energy plant achieving this. It is in the Netherlands, it required massive investment, and uses only 15% of the CO2 produced by the plant.
REALITY: SIRRL claims that Project Kea will provide up to 100 jobs and that there is potential for a further 200 in adjacent glasshouses. Where are these 300 staff going to come from? Waimate has no shortage of jobs and is struggling to fill available positions now. There is also an accommodation shortage in the district. Like Dairy plant developments within the district, staff will likely be transported to and from the site each day from outside the district. These staff are unlikely to shop in Waimate, buy fuel in Waimate or pay rates in Waimate.
How many of these positions will need to be filled by experienced operators? The plant will likely be operated by the major investor company China Tianying (CNTY), which owns and operates around 20 plants in China and Asia. The plant’s componentry will likely be supplied by CNTY’s subsidiary company, Jiangsu Environmental Protection Energy Equipment.
The building of the plant will also require specialised contractors, likely brought in from China.
Any jobs available for locals will likely be menial roles.
REALITY: Using a plasma furnace to vitrify fly ash is uncommon globally. It requires large amounts of electricity, is expensive and prone to breakdown. It is likely to be the first cost-cutting measure the company employs to reduce running costs in the future. If this happens, we will likely see fly ash treated as it is commonly disposed of in Europe by solidifying it in concrete and burying it in a hazardous landfill. Vitrifying toxic fly ash uses very high concentrated heat to melt the ash into a glass-like material. Although some of the poisonous material is destroyed, an amount of toxic material remains present that, over time, becomes a leachate risk. There is also the risk that when used as a construction material, it may be cut into in the future, exposing the toxins contained within.
SIRRL state that the plasma furnace will vitrify the toxic flyash into a glass like material encasing the toxic material. However, the company also states that the vitrified material can then be crushed and used for roading and construction. This raises serious concerns about SIRRL’s understanding of its own proposal and the technology involved.
CNTY currently employs plasma furnace technology in only one of its plants; why is that? The plasma furnace used by the company to treat its fly ash is also used for vitrifying hazardous material from other industries.
REALITY: SIRRL has made numerous claims about what it will do with the electricity produced. It claims it will produce enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes, perhaps giving the impression that powering homes is its intention. It also states it will provide neighbouring industries with energy and any business that might want to relocate near Project Kea with electricity. The company has also mentioned the potential to use excess energy for hydrogen fuel production.
The reality is they will be generating a minimal amount of electricity. WWW believes the figure of 20-30MW is overinflated and is more realistically around 21MW minus the 3MW of energy required to run the plant and the plasma furnace. Electricity generation would also depend on the plant continually running at full capacity and acquiring the needed 365,000 tonnes of waste annually, which WWW also believes is unrealistic.
REALITY: In a North & South magazine article titled ‘A Burning Question’ SIRRL and Renew Energy LTD director Paul Taylor stated that the company has “understandings and agreements in place” with waste management companies that amount to a “significant chunk” of the 365,000 tonnes required. “The councils in a lot of places don’t actually own the waste,” Taylor explained. Instead, the company has agreements with waste contractors “such as Waste Management, Envirowaste and Ecowaste” that collect waste on behalf of councils.
Despite Taylors’ claims, the North & South article included statements from Waste Management NZ and Envirowaste, the country’s two largest waste management operators, expressing that they would NOT support Project Kea.
REALITY: SIRRL pitched Project Kea to a full Waimate District Council meeting in July 2021. This pitch included a budget of $350 million. Almost two years later, in March 2023, WWW met with SIRRL representatives and asked company director Paul Taylor whether he was still confident that the company could deliver what they had promised on the $350m budget, bearing in mind inflation has seen building costs and materials significantly rise over the previous two years.
In his response, Mr Taylor said the budget was “probably unrealistic” due to inflation. However, he failed to provide any alternative budget. Mr Taylor stated that the company also sought to increase its revenue from electricity and by-products due to inflation. It was quickly pointed out to Mr Taylor that he had to build the plant first.
Similar-sized W-t-E plants in Europe budget twice to three times as much as SIRRL’s budget. Mr Taylor has since been quoted in an article stating that the Project Kea plant will be the “Rolls Royce of W-t-E plants,” with fellow SIRRL director Herman Sioen claiming the proposed plant to be “the best of the best.”
The Project Kea website also claimed that the $350m budget included two phases, phase one being $240m and phase two $110m. When Mr Taylor was asked what the two phases included, he did not provide an explanation and was more concerned about where the information came from than finding an answer to our question, which he promised to do. We are still waiting.