MVV Energie awarded municipal waste incineration contracts in Rhine/Neckar region

Following separate pan-European tenders, the cities of Mannheim and Heidelberg and Rhine/Neckar District Council have awarded municipal waste incineration contracts to MVV Umwelt Ressourcen GmbH, a subsidiary of MVV Energie, as was announced by the company in Mannheim on Friday. The tendering of these contracts was necessary due to the expiry of the existing contracts in December 2012. The new contracts to incinerate a total of around 200,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste a year will take effect as of January 2013 and have terms amounting to a minimum of six years and, including exten-sions, a maximum of eleven years.

According to Matthias Brückmann, a member of MVV Energie's Executive Board, the results of the pan-European tenders provide "sustainable proof of the trust placed in our company. We are a reliable and competent partner to local authorities in the region and their inhabitants not only for supplying energy and water, but also when it comes to putting the region's waste to use in a way that protects the environment and the climate." According to Brückmann, the ultra-efficient plants on Friesenheim Island in Mannheim and professional marketing of the energy generated from incineration represent key pillars of the company's successful energy concept.

MVV Energie's waste-fired heating energy plant began operations in 1965 already. By building further boilers, the energy company has secured a key competitive position at its Mannheim location in terms of generating energy from waste. More than 600,000 tonnes of waste a year are currently incinerated on Friesenheim Island. The plant not only generates more than 200,000 megawatts of electricity that are fed into the grid, but also uses the waste heat thereby emitted to generate more than 2 million tonnes of steam to provide an environmentally-friendly supply to adjacent industry. "To achieve this, we have invested around half a billion euros in Mannheim in total over the past twenty years. This has also created sustainable, highly qualified jobs directly on location," added Brückmann.

With an annual capacity of around 1.6 million tonnes at five locations across Germany, the MVV Energie Group is one of Germany's leading providers of waste incineration. Alongside industrial waste, the company also disposes of non-recyclable waste for 21 local and regional authorities with a total of around five million inhabitants. In January, MVV Energie was awarded the contract, also following a pan-European tender, to build a non-recyclable waste incineration plant in the southern English city of Plymouth. The relevant approval processes are currently underway there and construction work is due to begin in spring 2012.