Incineration on agenda ahead of EU meeting

Dr Caroline Jackson, the Conservative MEP for South West England, who is leading the European Parliament's negotiation of the Directive, said the issue of whether incinerators should be classed as “recovery” or “disposal” plants would be addressed at the meeting.

Speaking at the CIWM conference in Torbay today, Dr Jackson revealed that the German Presidency of the EU was drawing up a new position on the issue, which collapsed into a “muddle” at the Parliament's first reading of the Directive back in February this year.

The German framework would see a new flexible energy efficiency formula to determine which plants should win classification as “recovery” plants.

Under the proposals, which won support from MEPs without an exact formula being agreed, incinerators reaching a certain level of efficiency at generating energy – such as by creating usable heat rather than just electricity – could be classified as “recovery” facilities, rather than “disposal” plants.

Dr Jackson explained that the importance of the classification of incinerators as “recovery” plants in this country would come because projects would be more favourable to the public if they were determined to be “recovery” rather than “disposal” operations. She called for the government to be more vocal with its public support for incineration if it is to meet its landfill diversion targets up to 2020.

Flexible

Under the German plan, Dr Jackson said the formula which set down when an incinerator is efficient enough at generating energy from waste, to be classified as a “recovery” plant, could be flexible to local circumstances in the different EU countries.

This meant that in hot countries, which do not need to generate heat, there could be different requirements than in colder Northern European countries where heat is more useful.

And, she said the Danish concerns about waste imports from other EU countries “swamping” their incinerators could be tackled with an optional import restriction on waste destined for incineration. However, she warned that the current Waste Shipment Regulations was posing a complication to drawing up such a measure.

Dr Jackson said she couldn't predict what would come out of the Council of Ministers meeting on June 28, but that she expected a common position. This would then see a 2nd reading of the Directive, a replacement of the 1975 Waste Framework Directive, possibly delayed until after Christmas because of the time needed to translate the proposals into all the different European languages.

One complication on the British side of preparing for the Environment Council meeting on June 28, is that Gordon Brown is set to take over as Prime Minister the day before – and potentially make changes to whichever minister from Defra would have to represent UK interests within the European meeting the next day.

FoE

Environmental pressure groups like Friends of the Earth are opposing the move to re-classify incinerators as “recovery” plants, as they believe “most energy-from-waste” projects are not the best way to deal with waste, although they are supporting technologies like anaerobic digestion.

Dr Michael Warhurst, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, told letsrecycle.com today (June 12, 2007) that as far as the Waste Framework Directive is concerned, his group was being “conservative” on the issue, focusing only on the primary purpose of incinerators.

They are calling only for a clarification of the European Court of Justice ruling that incinerators are “disposal” plants if their primary purpose is to get rid of waste, rather than to generate energy.

He said: “British incinerators are already required to create heat under the Waste Incineration Directive where it is possible – and even the Environment Agency requires them to where practical. Our point is, if it is practical to generate heat, why do they need the Waste Framework Directive as well to make them produce it?”