Friday, April 09, 2010

GENUINE SURPRISE

Before the start of Wednesday night's Brigg Town Council planning and environment committee meeting in the Angel Suite, word got round that North Lincolnshire Council had just refused permission for Eco2's straw-burning power station on the former sugar factory site at Scawby Brook.
Some of our town councillors seemed genuinely surprised at the decision, which is great news for those Scawby Brook householders who twice came to debates at the Angel Suite to voice their objections, particularly about wind-blown straw and the number of lorries which would be passing their homes.
Brigg Blog thought North Lincs planning committee members would go along with their chief planning officer's recommendation, which was to grant permission. However, as we forecast earlier in the week, refusal would almost certainly result in a speedy appeal to the Government to review the decision and give the go-ahead anyway. This has happened to similar schemes in other parts of the UK.
As transport seems to be one of the main reasons North Lincolnshire planners turned the application down, maybe Eco2 will have to go away and have another look at using rail and river as a way of delivering some, or most, of the straw bales to their site.
We explained how that might work in an earlier post on this subject. It would be good to see the long-disused rail connection (formerly Brigg Sugar Factory sidings) brought back into use, and also pleasing to see commercial barges on the River Ancholme, which hasn't happened since the early 1970s.

1 comment:

Ken Harrison said...

You could be right, Nige.

One problem I see, however, is the cost-effectiveness of transport by rail.

For example, straw is bulky. Rail trucks are normally designed to convey raw materials such as coal, ballast, beet sugar etc - these are naturally heavy and dense.

The width of the rail track and height of bridges will dictate the the number of straw bales carried by a single rail truck.

Consequently, the gross weight of straw bales could represent only a fraction of the carrying capacity of a rail truck - vis-a-vis the restrictions imposed by the rail track - so will train-loads be enormously long, or comparatively regular - this will an important determinent of the cost effectiveness.