Planning permission secured for carbon capture at Rookery South ERF

Encyclis, one of the UK’s largest owners and operators of Energy-from-Waste facilities, has announced the confirmation of planning permission for a full-scale carbon capture plant at its Rookery South Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) in Bedfordshire.

Planning permission has been granted by Central Bedfordshire Council to enable construction of the carbon capture plant and associated infrastructure on land adjoining the existing ERF.

The news follows the announcement in October that Encyclis had reached financial close, in conjunction with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, to build the UK’s first full-scale carbon capture plant for Energy-from-Waste at Protos ERF, in Cheshire.

Rookery South ERF is set to be the second facility with carbon capture in Encyclis’ core Midlands cluster of Energy-from-Waste sites in the central belt of the UK.

The facility, which this week reached the milestone of 2 million tonnes of residual waste processed since it started operating in January 2022, is already home to one of the UK’s first carbon capture pilot plants in the waste sector.

The planned addition of carbon capture would enable Rookery South ERF, to capture carbon dioxide from the residual waste combustion process. Encyclis is continuing to work on potential options for the transport and storage of captured CO₂.

Mark Burrows-Smith, Chief Executive at Encyclis, said: “The confirmation of planning permission for Rookery South is another milestone achievement in our industry-leading mission to enable the decarbonisation of residual waste treatment. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key component of that strategy and we have already started construction on our landmark Protos CCS project in the North West. With planning permission now secured for Rookery South ERF, Encyclis has sufficient planning consents to allow capture of CO₂ volumes equivalent to our fossil CO₂ emissions across our Midlands cluster.”

Rookery South ERF provides capacity to safely and sustainably treat up to 657,000 tonnes per year of residual waste. The treatment process enables the facility to generate 60MWH of baseload electricity which is supplied to the National Grid, as well as recovering ash to be converted into construction aggregates and metals for recycling, in support of the transition to a circular economy.

The planned addition of carbon capture will enable the facility to decarbonise this process. Flue gases from the combustion process would be diverted to the carbon capture plant, where CO2 molecules are stripped out and transferred away from the site for storage.

Additionally, the presence of biogenic carbon, as well as fossil carbon, in residual waste opens up the potential to deliver carbon dioxide removals, which effectively reduce the overall volume of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The deployment of carbon capture in important and hard-to-abate industry sectors is regarded by Government as crucial to achieving climate change goals, protecting and creating jobs, and supporting economic growth.