Cool reaction to plasma power

The Sunday Times
June 7, 2009
Things have not always worked out for Paris Moayedi, the former boss of Jarvis, now he wants to turn Britain’s rubbish into green energy
Tricia Holly Davis

Things have not always worked out as planned for Paris Moayedi. The former boss of Jarvis, the support-services group, gained notoriety in 2001 for telling the wife of a business rival that she resembled Boy George - a remark he later said he meant as a compliment.
About a year later came the Potters Bar train crash, which killed seven people. Jarvis, which was responsible for maintaining the track, began to crumble. Moayedi resigned as chief executive in 2003.
Now the 71-year-old Iranian-born entrepreneur is staging a comeback with a scheme to turn Britain’s rubbish into green energy. One of his fellow investors in Advanced Plasma Power (APP) is Henry Lafferty, a former Jarvis director. The venture isn’t exactly going to plan and is struggling to raise the capital to take it past the concept stage.
APP was founded in 2005 as an offshoot of Tetronics, an Oxfordshire technology firm that Moayedi had bought the year before. Tetronics specialis-es in “plasma-arc” technology. Plasma is created when a gas is heated to temperatures of 5,000C, as hot as the surface of the sun.
Moayedi’s idea was to combine the technology with a widely known waste-to-energy process called gasification, where rubbish is “roasted” in a chamber that produces a hydrogen-rich gas that can be converted into electricity and heat.
One benefit of the combined process is that, in addition to energy, it produces a glassy material that can be used as a construction aggregate.
The concept has yet to gain favour in Britain, though. Catalyst Corporate Finance, an advisory firm, estimates that Britain has 35 waste-to-energy projects in the pipeline that would provide the equivalent of 1.5% of today’s grid generating capacity by 2020 at a cost of £4.7 billion. Not one of them is using plasma. “The main concern for investors is that plasma technology is too risky,” said Mark Wilson, a partner at Catalyst.
One worry is that it is too energy-intensive. APP calculates that about 40% of the power produced from the waste would be required to operate the plant. Another criticism is that plasma technology is too expensive. Moayedi estimates it would cost £72m to build a plant that processes 150,000 tonnes of rubbish each year, producing 17MW of electricity. This is at the top end of some waste-to-energy cost scales.
Moayedi points out, however, that costs can be recouped in a number of ways, including from the sale of green electricity and the amount earned from renewable obligation certificates (Rocs).
Plasma technology qualifies for two Rocs for every mega-watt-hour (MWh) of green energy produced. The 130,000MWh plant that APP initially wants to build would earn £11m a year based on today’s Roc value.
APP would also earn money by charging £80 per tonne of rubbish collected from businesses such as supermarkets and local councils.
However, Richard Feigen, managing director of Seymour Pierce, the investment bank, said investors were wary of these types of revenue streams.
“Areas that rely on tax breaks, Rocs or carbon credits add another level of risk in investors’ eyes,” he said.
Moayedi is undeterred, saying APP will continue to seek investors and planning permission to build commercial plants, starting with one close to the Doncaster North seat of Ed Miliband, the energy and climate-change secretary.