OPINION: A coalition for waste?

Localism and incentives. These seem to be the two watchwords for the Conservatives' overall approach to the management of waste. By arguing that local people should have the say over what's delivered locally – including incentives for neighbours of new developments – the party has avoided discussing specific treatment technologies and taking a prescriptive line to their development.

Despite proposed incentives to develop new facilities, including a floor under landfill tax and continued tax escalation, the waste industry is likely to face the same challenges in delivering new infrastructure over the next five years as it has seen during the last

 
Neil Riding, Wardell Armstrong

Favouring a community approach over a state-led one also means the likely abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC). Under Labour, the IPC had the power to bypass local planning to push through large facilities of strategic importance. This flies in the face of the Conservative approach and they are likely to restore decision-making powers to local planning authorities, with the final say returning to the Secretary of State.

What else do we know about Conservative plans? They've adopted a policy of zero waste to landfill and to achieve this they've pledged a number of measures, including a floor under the £72 per tonne landfill tax until 2020 to encourage investment in infrastructure and increased recycling. They are, though, opposed in principle to PFI and the current round of PFI funding will likely be the last, especially given the pressing need to reduce the national deficit. Instead, with the municipal waste sector increasingly well catered for, they're likely to rely on the treatment and diversion of commercial and industrial (C&I) waste to get to their target.

Hang on though – what about the views of their partners in coalition government? We know that the Liberal Democrats strongly support waste prevention ahead of re-use, recycling and energy from waste. To push current practices up the waste hierarchy towards prevention they've proposed to establish an independent committee that would identify those resources that are being used unsustainably, and recommend targets to reduce their consumption. Naturally, against this backdrop, they're opposed to incineration – but like their Conservative partners, they're in favour of AD and would look to integrate the collection and treatment of household, business and agricultural waste in order to maximise the potential for AD deployment.

An interesting twist

So where does all this leave us? There's likely to be a lot more emphasis on the treatment of C&I waste, with stronger and possibly more binding targets to be met. The Conservative policy of zero waste to landfill appears not to differentiate between municipal and C&I wastes and with central government money going into PFI likely to run dry, it seems unlikely that local authorities will become engaged in the development of significant infrastructure to deal with C&I waste. Achieving the Conservatives' ambitious target will probably be left in the main to the private sector through ongoing financial incentives.

Here's an interesting twist. The Conservatives want to see an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – higher than the current target of 60% – while the Lib Dems are pushing for 100%. Similarly, the Conservatives want to generate 15% of energy from renewables by 2020 with the Lib Dems aiming for 40%. So the waste agenda clearly has a role to play in supporting these ambitious goals – both by diverting waste from landfill, and by cutting fossil fuel consumption through the recovery of energy from waste.

AD looks like being the clear winner here. Both parties are keen to see its continued development and expansion as a robust, simple and effective way of treating a wide range of materials and generating renewable energy from waste. Large scale EfW on the other hand could the big loser, as it's not favoured by the Lib Dems, and not easy to push through the Conservatives' localism agenda.

Overall, there's probable consent between the parties on the need for new infrastructure but we wait to see clear plans for assisting its development. Despite proposed incentives to develop new facilities, including a floor under landfill tax and continued tax escalation, the waste industry is likely to face the same challenges in delivering new infrastructure over the next five years as it has seen during the last.