The Green Investment Bank (GIB) has continued its push into the waste-management sector, ploughing £28.25m into an innovative project in Scotland that combines recycling and energy-recovery technology.

 

The GIB confirmed on Friday that it will invest in the new £111m Levenseat project in Lanark, Scotland, alongside Foresight Group and Zouk Capital. The project is also backed by an equity investment from Levenseat Limited and senior debt from Investec Bank.

 

The plant will be the first in the UK to use a technology called fluidised bed gasification alongside refuse-derived fuel. It will work by first extracting recyclable materials, leaving a residual fuel which is sent to the neighboring energy-from-waste plant. There, it is fed into a heated bed of sand-like material, suspended in air to create a syngas. The gas is used to create electricity that will be fed into the National Grid.

 

GIB said the 12.5MW plant is expected to supply nearly 18,000 homes over its 25-year lifespan, when it opens in 2017. It could also prevent 1.4 million tonnes of waste going to landfill each year and reduce greenhouse gases by about 1.3 million tonnes.

 

Environmental groups say that energy-recovery plants discourage local councils from investing in recycling or waste-reduction activities, but Shaun Kingsbury, chief executive of GIB, said the new technologies help to overcome this problem.

 

"This first-of-its-kind project is the latest innovative example of how the UK is modernizing its waste-management infrastructure," he said in a statement. "By increasing recycling and using the remaining waste to produce energy, the Levenseat project will make a significant contribution towards Scotland's zero-waste plan."