Key information
Request reference number: MGLA221123-0803
Date of response:
Summary of request
Your request
Emissions from five municipal waste incinerators affect Londoners: SELCHP (Lewisham) is the only one within inner London, the remaining four being Colnbrook (Slough), Edmonton (Enfield), Belvedere (Bexley) and Beddington Lane (Sutton).
If emissions from the above five incinerators weren’t included in any ULEZ calculations, please explain why not.
If emissions from the above five incinerators were included in any ULEZ calculations, please provide full details.
Our response
The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is a policy targeted at reducing harmful air pollutant emissions from road transport. As such, in assessing the impact of the ULEZ no changes are considered to have happened to non-transport sources such as incinerators. The GLA and Transport for London (TfL) have published a number of reports analysing the impacts or expected impacts of the past and current iterations of the ULEZ, all of which include detailed descriptions of the method used for assessment. We have provided links to two examples of recently published ULEZ information below.
Within ULEZ impact assessment reports, the impact of emission changes to relevant road traffic vehicles is assessed. The Inner London ULEZ Expansion One Year Report analyses the impact of the inner London ULEZ on air pollutant emissions and concentrations one year after its launch in October 2021. You can find details on the methodology in Appendix 2.
TfL published the expected impacts of the proposals to expand the ULEZ London-wide as part of the public consultation on these proposals. The consultation document sets out the expected impacts of the proposals on road transport air pollutant emissions and the resulting expected impacts on pollutant concentrations. When predicting pollutant concentration changes associated with the ULEZ, emissions from sources such as industrial sources are not amended or removed. The expected impacts are set out in Section 6 (with further tables in Appendix D), and further information on the method and data sources used is set out in Appendices B and C.
The GLA and TfL regularly produce the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (LAEI). This considers sources of pollution across London, including from waste burning. The emissions from waste sources used in this modelling are based on the registered information available from the Environment Agency at the date of publication. The latest modelling is the LAEI 2019, which includes emissions and concentrations of key pollutants across Greater London for 2013, 2016 and 2019, as well as forecasts for 2025 and 2030. The data set and summary note are available on the GLA website: London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (LAEI) 2019 - London Datastore