Plans to build a £100m incinerator in Oxfordshire to burn household waste will be drawn up in the new year.

County Hall has come out in favour of creating a giant plant where up to 200,000 tonnes of waste a year can be burned, to create electricity for thousands of homes.

Oxfordshire County Council has spent more than a year assessing alternatives to burying household waste in landfill sites.

And it has chosen the highly controversial option of incineration as the long term answer. It will now be faced with convincing local people of the safety of Energy from Waste plants, with critics insistent that burning waste adds to global warming and raises serious health concerns. Speculation on where the incinerator will be located will begin immediately, with County Hall not ruling out the need for more than one. The council says it would be awaiting proposals from companies before identifying possible sites.

Chris Cousins, the county's head of sustainable development, said various technologies had been looked at, but Energy from Waste by incineration was "the only one left in the ring."

He said: "This is widely used in other European countries. It is safe. It is a tried and tested technology."

Andrew Wood, of Oxfordshire Friends of the Earth, said the county council was taking "a crazy decision" by signing up for the wrong technology.