One of the UK’s biggest pension funds has lost more than £350m on a series of “calamitous” investments in incinerator power plants that are expected to go bust in the coming days.
The Guardian understands that Aviva Investors will put three incinerators into administration this week after pouring millions of pounds into what has been described as the country’s “dirtiest form of power generation”.
Aviva’s own accounts show that the three incinerator plants – in Hull in East Yorkshire, Boston in Lincolnshire and Barry in south Wales – accumulated loans totalling £480m from its investors between 2015 and 2023.
Aviva has written off £368m for the plants, which were originally intended to run on biomass waste wood and later converted to burn household waste, but which struggled to reach their targets.
A source said Aviva had originally hoped to play a role in supporting renewable energy alternatives but it had become apparent that the technology posed significant challenges that would require more investment to solve.
There were 60 fully operational energy-from-waste (EfW) plants in the UK at the end of last year, which generated about 3.1% of the country’s total net power generation and kept 16m tonnes of residual waste from heading to landfill.
But critics of incinerators argue that generating energy from burning waste contributes to greenhouse gas emissions compared with renewable power and may deter efforts to cut single-use plastics and improve recycling.
The plants in Hull and Boston have generated far less electricity than planned, while the plant in Barry has been mothballed due to a planning row with the Welsh government.
Aviva is expected to put all three incinerators into administration this month. The company declined to comment.
The decision follows months of criticism from individual shareholders. Speaking to the Guardian, one shareholder accused Aviva of making “calamitous investments” on behalf of its UK pension fund investors.
Shlomo Dowen, a campaigner at the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN), said incineration was “harming recycling and exacerbating climate change”.
“Additionally, at a time when all efforts should be made to improve air quality, incinerators are harming the air that we breathe. And that is just one example of why incinerators are experienced as bad neighbours.”
Dowen urged the UK government to follow Wales and Scotland in banning new incinerators.
Rudy Schulkind, a political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “We can’t burn our way out of this growing waste problem. Nearly half the rubbish from UK homes is now being sent to incinerators, and even more of them are being planned.
“This isn’t an issue just for the disproportionately poor communities whose lives are blighted by the traffic, smell, noise and air pollution from these facilities. Partly thanks to the growing amount of plastic ending up in our bins, incinerators are also a major source of planet-heating emissions, with some experts branding them the country’s dirtiest form of power generation.”
He added that the “real solution” to Britain’s waste problem was producing less waste in the first place.
“We should start by setting legally binding targets to cut plastic production, and next week’s UN summit in South Korea gives the UK government an excellent opportunity to push for effective action on the global stage,” he said.