Commencing full-scale commercial operations in 2024, Earls Gate Energy Centre enables up to 216,000 tonnes of non-recyclable commercial and domestic waste every year to be safely and sustainably processed through controlled combustion. This not only reduces the need for landfill, in line with the landfill reduction targets of the Scottish Government, but generates electricity, heat and other resources.

Purpose-built to exacting standards, the facility is set up to produce 22MW of baseload electricity while delivering 33MW of heat to be used by neighbouring industrial plants, which reduces the need to use fossil fuels.

The process is designed not only to generate electricity and heat but recover other resources from the ash that remains, including ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and material for conversion into aggregates.

Energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process by which non-recyclable, non-hazardous household and commercial waste is used as a fuel to generate electricity. After the separation of recyclable materials, residual waste is what remains.

Before the development of modern energy-from-waste technologies, most residual waste was sent to landfill. Now the same waste can be delivered to energy recovery facilities where it is weighed and tipped directly into a bunker.

The waste is then delivered into combustion chambers heated to above 850°C. The process heats up water in steel tubes within the boiler. The water is converted to superheated steam and delivered to a turbine that continuously generates electricity for onward transmission.

Emissions are filtered and cleaned before being released via tall flue stacks as a vapour. Ash from the furnace is collected separately and taken away for recycling and metal recovery.