WASTE POWER PLANT VISION

Wyndham and Geelong could share $320m site

WYNDHAM council has flagged working with Geelong as it looks to develop a $320 million waste-to-energy facility in Werribee.

The City of Wyndham is investigating the potential of teaming up with councils from Geelong through to Melbourne’s western suburbs to jointly create a hi-tech waste-processing plant.

Mayor Peter Maynard has returned from a six-country European tour armed with an ambitious plan after visiting 10 facilities and meeting dozens of suppliers of services and technology.

In a detailed report from the $31,000 trip, released this week, the council said it would look at co-operating with inner city councils and Geelong.

Wyndham found if they p pooled their residual waste, it would total about 260,000 tonnes a year.

“This could support investment by a third party in a large energy-from-waste facility, such as the facility visited at Greatmoor in the UK,” the council said.

Based on Greatmoor’s perf formance, the Werribee plant would generate enough electricity to supply about 30,000 h homes.

As one of the country’s faste est-growing municipalities, Wyndham council is bracing for a sharp rise in demand for waste services.

It owns and operates the Wyndham Refuse Disposal Facility, which is one of five commercial landfills serving Melbourne.

The amount of material moving through the Werribee tip is expected to double over the next decade, to more than one million tonnes a year.

But the council aims to divert 90 per cent of its civic waste from landfill by 2040.

Wyndham’s overseas tour, which took in the UK, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Germany, came a month before Geelong council carried out its own waste investigations.

Mayor Bruce Harwood and investment and attraction acting director Tim Ellis visited waste-to-energy sites while in Dundee, Scotland, and Turin, Italy.

Those stops were part of a wider 18-day trip, built around UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network annual meeting in Poland and a stopover in Malaysia to meet with AirAsia officials.

“A report will be out in due course outlining what’s occurred and what our next steps will be,” Cr Harwood told the Geelong Advertiser last week.