EnergyAustralia has plans to generate power from rubbish at its Mt Piper power station in NSW.

The energy recovery process being planned in partnership with Re.Group “could generate reliable baseload electricity supply for an additional 40,000 homes in New South Wales without having to burn more coal,” the company said.

The process would see part of the Mt Piper coal-fired power plant near Lithgow converted to use garbage as a fuel source.

Re.Group managing director David Singh says the plant hopes to find a use for some of the six million tonnes of waste that ends up in NSW landfills each year.

“The project will allow us to select and process some of this non-recyclable material into fuel so that it is no longer waste,” Mr Singh has told Fairfax reporters.

“It makes good sense to broaden Mt Piper’s fuel supply, supporting the plant’s long-term operation,” EnergyAustralia head of assets Julian Turecek said.

The idea is very much in its infancy for now, with an environmental feasibility study on the new fuel source to be undertaken this year.

“The first phase showed an energy recovery project at Mt Piper can work; now we’ll focus on investigating potential impacts such as transportation of the materials, plant emissions, and disposal of the residual ash,” Mr Turecek said.

“There’ll be ongoing consultation through development because we want to identify all the potential impacts, so that they can be mitigated or avoided altogether.”