Aberdeen’s £150 million Energy from Waste (EfW) facility in East Tullos has recommenced operations, marking its second reopening in just six months following a period of significant operational disruption.
The facility, a crucial component of waste management for Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, and Moray Councils, began processing non-recyclable waste on Tuesday, with a full resumption of services anticipated within days.
The Ness EfW plant, which officially opened in April 2024, is designed to process 150,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste annually, diverting it from landfill and generating energy. However, its short operational history has been marred by instability. The first closure occurred in June last year when original operator Indaver, a Belgian firm, announced it was “reviewing its involvement due to ongoing issues” and reportedly threatened to abandon the site over “serious maintenance faults.”
Following this initial setback, Aberdeen City Council reached an agreement with EfW Ness Ltd, a subsidiary of Acciona Industrial UK Ltd, to run the plant, which then reopened in August. At the time, EfW Ness lauded the facility as a “world-class project” reducing landfill for the region. However, this arrangement proved temporary.
On 8 December 2025, Aberdeen City Council terminated EfW Ness’s contract, leading to the facility’s second shutdown. EfW Ness has since stated it considers the termination “wrongful and intends to contest” the decision, indicating potential legal ramifications for the council.
During both closure periods, waste that would typically be processed at the East Tullos facility was redirected to alternative disposal sites, primarily the Stoneyhill landfill in Peterhead. The repeated disruptions underscore the precarious nature of Scotland’s waste infrastructure, particularly in light of the postponed national landfill ban.
The Scottish Government’s ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste, initially planned for 2021 and then delayed to 2025 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has now been pushed back a second time to January 2028. This latest deferment, announced by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) via a temporary regulatory position statement, is attributed to a “capacity gap” in the country’s waste treatment facilities, specifically a shortfall in operational incineration capacity. Reports suggested that without the delay, up to 100 truckloads of waste would have required daily transportation to England for disposal.
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The situation highlights a national dilemma: while EfW plants like Aberdeen’s are promoted by local authorities as a “modern and more environmentally friendly solution” to reduce landfill waste and generate electricity and heat, environmental groups like Friends of the Earth Scotland argue against a reliance on incineration, advocating for greater investment in waste reduction and recycling to avoid “toxic pollution and climate breakdown.”
Aberdeen City Council has now appointed waste and recycling company Suez as the interim operator for the Ness facility.
Suez, which already holds a long-standing waste management contract with the council, expressed its readiness to leverage its “technical expertise to support the councils of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray” in managing the facility. The appointment of Suez offers a degree of stability, though the search for a long-term operator remains a critical task for the consortium of councils involved.
