Press Release
James Watt Award for Shetland’s Energy Recovery Plant/District Heating Scheme
William Spence, Plant Manager and Neville Martin, District Heating Manager have been awarded the James Watt Medal for a paper they have written on the Energy Recovery Plant and Lerwick District Heating Scheme.
The medal is awarded annually by the Institute of Civil Engineers and celebrates excellence within technical writing. It is named after the Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor who died in 1819 and is awarded for papers that have substantial mechanical engineering content.
The Energy Recovery Plant has been operating successfully in Shetland for 12 years, burning domestic, commercial and industrial waste from Shetland, Orkney and Offshore to produce heat for approximately 50% of the buildings in Lerwick. Hot water generated by the plant is purchased by Shetland Heat Energy and Power Ltd and distributed around the town via insulated pipes.
“There are very few district heating schemes in the UK” said Neville Martin, “so we were glad to have the opportunity to write about the way things work in Lerwick and to show it as an effective method of waste management.
“Nobody writes about these kinds of things, they tend to concentrate on more glamorous large scale engineering projects, so it has been good to get the professional recognition of this award. Hopefully this will encourage other local authorities to consider energy from waste as a sustainable and clean way to generate power and heat in the future.”
The paper discusses the negative connotations that still exist in the UK in relation to the word “incineration”. Unlike in Europe, where it is seen as good environmental practice, in the UK incineration is often viewed as a dirty and undesirable process.
“Visitors are often surprised that there is no big cloud of black smoke coming out of the plant” said William Spence. “Incineration is not a landfill in the sky. It is an incredibly efficient way of capturing energy from municipal waste that would otherwise have been dumped in landfill.
“The plant operates at 80% thermal efficiency and has become one of the leading players in reducing carbon emissions and fuel poverty in Shetland. Now that the infrastructure is in place, the opportunity is available for other waste heat resources to be exploited in the future”
Both William and Neville are looking forward to attending the award ceremony in October at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London and will be presenting the paper to the Institute in 2012.