Delayed £150 million city incinerator project set to finally be commissioned

The Aberdeen incinerator is due to finally start burning waste next month.

Construction of the £150 million Ness Energy Project in East Tullos has been plagued by numerous delays.

Once fully up and running, it is planned to burn 150,000 tonnes of non-recyclable material per year from the Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and Moray council areas.

EFW Ness Limited, a subsidiary of Acciona Industrial UK, is the contractor for the new incinerator.

Due to a contractual agreement, for the past few months the contractor has been continuing to send waste from the three northeast councils to landfill because the incinerator has not been ready to process it.

However, a new Aberdeen City Council report says the contractor is due to start firing up the incinerator next month.

An update report for councillors states that the contractor’s “current expectation is the hot commissioning will commence in February”.

Hot commissioning is the process of actually firing up the incinerator to burn waste.

EFW Ness Limited had a “contingency delivery plan” to handle the nonrecyclable rubbish from Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray if its East Tullos site was not ready to take in waste by October 29 last year.

As it ended up missing that deadline, the rubbish from all three councils which can’t be recycled has had to be sent to landfill instead ever since.

But if all goes to plan, this rubbish will start being diverted from landfill to be dealt with by the Aberdeen incinerator.

The council, however, has warned about possible further delays for the overall completion of the project beyond the hot commissioning stage.

The report said that works are “progressing, and completion date is still expected to be summer 2023”. It noted that “the delivery of the project to date has been hampered by several issues, both internally and externally”.

These issues have included the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, recruitment of suitablytrained staff, and impacts on the supply chain, according to the contractor.

“There is still a significant risk that external impacts may continue to affect the anticipated delivery timeline and budget,” the council’s report stated.

Once the hot commissioning gets under way, Aberdeen City Council’s staff say they are will be maintaining a “close liaison” with the incinerator contractor “to ensure a smooth transition for depositing residual waste to the new facility”.

The Ness Energy Project incinerator in Aberdeen.