Secretary of State Grants Amendment to Development Consent Order (DCO)

The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published his decision to grant a non-material amendment to the DCO known as the North London Heat and Power Generating Station Order 2017.

The DCO, which was granted in February 2017, allows North London Waste Authority (NLWA) to build a new energy recovery facility and associated buildings and works. An energy recovery facility uses residual waste (waste that cannot be recycled) as a fuel to generate energy, which can be in the form of electricity and heat.

NLWA’s original DCO application specified a capacity of ‘around 70 megawatts of electricity’. 70 megawatts is the average output expected from the facility, though the actual output will sometimes be higher or lower due to variations in the energy content of waste. As granted, the DCO specified a capacity of ‘up to 70 megawatts’ (emphasis added), which would reduce the facility operator’s ability to handle these variations and prevent them from pursuing opportunities to make the facility more efficient. NLWA therefore applied to amend the capacity to ‘up to 78 megawatts’, which is the maximum output expected from the facility in line with the original DCO application, in February 2018.

The amendment will not have any impact on the environmental impact of the facility, including on air quality, as it does not affect the amount of waste the facility could process. This amount, namely 700,000 tonnes each year, was assessed in the Environmental Statement submitted with the original DCO application.

All documents related to the DCO, from the original application to the amendment, are available on the National Infrastructure Planning website.