£100m plan to heat city using sewage works moves forward

Richard Youle

A £100 million scheme to heat city centre buildings using waste heat from a sewage treatment works is being explored.

A feasibility study commissioned by Swansea Council has concluded that a district heating network powered by Swansea Bay wastewater treatment works could be viable.

The local authority commissioned experts to assess the idea having received a £218,300 UK Government grant.

They examined two potential sources of spare heat: a data centre planned as part of a wider infrastructure project featuring a Swansea Bay tidal lagoon and housing; and Swansea Bay wastewater treatment works, off Fabian Way.

Geoff Bacon, Swansea’s head of property services, told a council committee the data centre would provide more spare heat than the Welsh Water works and generate better returns for investors but that the latter was felt preferable as it was there already while the lagoon would need to be built to power the data centre in the first place.

He said district heating networks, as they’re known, existed in the UK including one in the Welsh capital piping spare heat from an incinerator to buildings in Cardiff Bay.

“It’s not something that’s straightforward but it’s certainly do-able,” said Mr Bacon.

He estimated the Swansea one would cost in the region of £100 million and involve disruption to lay the pipework from the wastewater treatment works through Swansea docks and from there to buildings mostly south of Fabian Way.

He said the council could potentially be one of the buyers of this low-carbon energy. If the project was taken forward, he said, the council could be an “enabler” but was very unlikely to be the lead investor as it didn’t own any of the land and wasn’t behind the planned data centre. “We haven’t got any skin in the game,” he said.

This was echoed by Cllr Andrea Harrington, cabinet member for transformation. “It would be very costly for us to take it on,” she said.

A district heating proposal examined in Swansea a decade or more ago, she said, would have cost in the region of £14 million.

The new network being examined isn’t felt to be suitable for houses, the economy and infrastructure service transformation committee heard, unless it connected to a new development from scratch.

Organisations including dock owners Associated British Ports, Swansea University and DST – the company leading on the lagoon, data centre and housing project – have been consulted, and DST provided some match-funding for the feasibility study.

Cllr Philip Downing, chairman of the committee, said it was an exciting idea and similar to one he’d been involved with at a steelworks. He added that schemes like this which helped move the UK towards its goal of being net zero in greenhouse gas emissions did “cost a bit”.

Expensive

Mr Bacon said they could be expensive but that they lasted, meaning costs came down overall as time went on.

A committee report said an outline business case will be prepared for potential investors on the basis of using the wastewater treatment works as the heat source.

It added: “This is simply a feasibility study with no commitment expected at this stage. If at some point a cabinet decision is sought, a formal summary of risk will be undertaken.”

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