In a statement today, the group, which represents 37 companies in the RDF (refuse derived fuel) supply and user chain, also branded the recent call for a ban on exports from the Environmental Services Association (ESA) as “short-sighted” and “protectionist”.
The RDF Industry Group explained that the separate emission trading schemes being adopted by the UK and the EU “complicates” the aim of ensuring ensure that “waste management costs are minimised and infrastructure across Europe is used efficiently”.
The UK’s ETS replaced its participation in the European Union ETS on 1 January 2021. Earlier this year, it was expanded to cover energy from waste from 2028.
‘Aligned’
Andy Jones, chair of the RDF Industry Group, said: “Any treatment of residual waste will have a carbon impact, and both the UK and EU are seeking to re-design their emissions trading schemes to tax this impact and incentivise its reduction.
“We need to ensure the financial burden of such schemes is broadly aligned across Europe to allow the residual waste market to continue to function efficiently, as it does now. Mechanisms such as free allowances or carbon border adjustments are already used to take account of global trading in other areas, and there is no reason why the same can’t be done in the UK in relation to energy from waste (EfW) and the ETS.”
Heat
Mr Jones, who is also managing director of Totus Environmental, later argued that RDF exports have the potential to result in lower greenhouse gas emissions, despite the waste having to be transported further.
This is because, he said, most of the northern European plants that receive RDF exported from the UK are “efficient combined heat and power facilities where the surplus heat left over from electricity generation is used by industrial or domestic customers”.
He said this avoids the need for heat to be generated from fossil fuels and by contrast, “few of the UK’s EfW facilities have suitable heat users nearby and instead vent the left over heat to the atmosphere”.
The free-for-all EfW building spree is continuing
- RDF Industry Group
ESA
Earlier this month, the ESA published a report setting out the ESA’s strategy for the successful application of the ETS to waste incinerators, which could place a tax on each tonne of carbon emitted.
The ESA here called for a ban on exports to ensure the export of waste is not encouraged once an ETS is active.
Mr Jones said this is “short-sighted” because ESA’s members are “over-competing” with one another.
He said: “In the last 10 years operational incinerator capacity in the UK has increased from 5 to 20 million tonnes a year – more than in the rest of Europe combined. Whilst much of this is needed to reduce landfill, ESA has been repeatedly warned that too much capacity will compete with recycling – or with other applications such as production of aviation fuel.
“Despite the UK government setting new, stretching recycling targets, the free-for-all building spree is continuing, with a further 5 million tonnes capacity currently under construction. ESA members are simply over-competing with one another as if waste is limitless, leaving them staring into a waste supply blackhole in the future”.
The UK waste sector has ploughed on building what will soon become some of the most expensive stranded assets in Europe
- Andy Jones, RDF Industry Group
Exports
The RDF Industry Group stated that exports have for over a decade provided access to spare EfW capacity in places like The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden for waste producers in the UK.
It said this allowed the UK time to transition “from landfill to a recycling-led waste system, without building its own EfW capacity that would be rendered redundant as recycling rates increased”.
The body stated however that instead, UK recycling rates have “stagnated while EfWs have proliferated”.
According to Mr Jones, the ESA’s remarks thus come across as “protectionist”.
He said: “Unfortunately, instead of seeing exports as part of the transition to a circular economy, the UK waste sector – still dominated by disposal and treatment rather than recycling – has ploughed on building what will soon become some of the most expensive stranded assets in Europe.
“At a time when we need the best environmental solutions at affordable prices, the ESA’s proposal would reduce choice for cash-strapped local councils and artificially inflate UK EfW gate fees. The Government should disregard calls for protectionism and ensure that the ETS allows all forms of EfW to compete on a level playing field.”
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