Waste arisings: will we have capacity?

Since Eunomia issued its fourth Residual Waste Infrastructure Review in May a flurry of reports has appeared on whether the UK needs more waste facilities.

Our report argued that were at risk of building too much capacity of the wrong kind, while Defra recently concluded there was enough plant to enable the UK to meet Landfill Directive targets, and promptly withdrew PFI credits from the proposed Norfolk incinerator.

Yet a widely publicised CIWM-commissioned report by Ricardo-AEA warns of a shortfall of 15m tonnes of waste treatment capacity in 2020 (see letsrecycle.com story). Now Veolia has announced that it will fund its own study; the executive vice-president for UK and Northern Europe commented: We dont think there is going to be overcapacity in the next years, otherwise we wouldnt be building any capacity ourselves, at the same time stating they would not invest in merchant anaerobic digestion due to there being too many [Merchant AD] projects on the table.

Defras report focuses on biodegradable municipal waste and the targets of the Landfill Directive, but why do Eunomia and Ricardo-AEA appear to reach such different conclusions?

Our last report said that the UK is moving to a situation of potential overcapacity in 2017/18 of around 2.2 million tonnes. By contrast, Ricardo-AEA state that The capacity gap may be anywhere up to 15M tpa, and is likely to be more than 5M tpa by 2020. So, whos right? In theory, we could both be right: we could be heading for over-capacity for residual waste, but with nowhere near enough capacity for other forms of treatment we might think we need. Our view, though, is that whilst it isnt always easy to work out where their figures come from, there seem to be some oddities in Ricardo-AEAs analysis which suggest that their headline-grabbing conclusions dont stack up.

Different wastes

Its important to understand how different the two reports are in approach. Ours concentrates on residual waste of the type likely to be treated by incineration, MBT, MHT or other thermal treatment. Ricardo-AEAs focuses on commercial and industrial (C&I) waste, but also brings in some construction and demolition (C&D) and household waste to estimate a combined capacity gap for all types of waste infrastructure.

C&I waste

Where we cover the same ground, our results are strikingly similar. C&I waste arisings are thought to be the biggest area of uncertainty, and youd expect differences between our projections for 2020. In fact AEA-Ricardo predicts 57.9m tonnes, while we say 57.5 million. Interestingly, Defra is the outlier on C&I waste, forecasting a decline of around 8% in England as its central 2020 scenario.

Export

What about waste exports? Ricardo-AEA suggest export may be a bubble, and by 2020 will not have increased beyond their 2012 level: 0.9m tonnes. So has Eunomia over-egged the export pudding? Actually, weve been quite conservative, and our prediction for 2020 is only 0.4m tonnes higher, even though, in the year to September, 1.1 million tonnes had been exported (suggesting our estimate will be exceeded in 2013).

Omissions and errors

Part of the difference can be explained by Ricardo-AEA overlooking open air windrow composting, which, according to WRAPs most recent survey, accounts for 3m tonnes. And their arisings figures dont quite add up but the error is only 0.9m tonnes.

C&D waste?

In fact, theres only one big difference between the reports. Ricardo-AEA says that 15.4m tonnes of English C&D waste requires treatment, although theres no clear source for this figure, either in the report or its appendix. We only consider C&D waste to the extent that it is included in waste landfilled at the active rate of landfill tax, and hence, is likely to be suitable for residual waste treatment.

In addition, Ricardo-AEs figures, derived from EA data, on treatment of C&I wastes includes C&D wastes other than mineral wastes. All of the rest of the C&D wastes are effectively already included in those figures.

Eunomia’s analysis of recent Ricardo-AEA C&I waste report:

Present incorrect

Making mistakes in projections is one thing, but Ricardo-AEAs figures for 2013, indicate a current treatment capacity gap of 30m tonnes. That can only be going to landfill on top of a further 10m tonnes of waste they say is unavoidably landfilled. Thats a total of 40m tonnes. Yet according to HMRCs landfill bulletin, only 18.8m tonnes of standard rate material was landfilled in the UK in 2012/13. Ricardo-AEA seems to have the present day wrong by 21m tonnes. We could imagine that some lower rate material is being misdescribed (so as to qualify for that rate). But even if 100% of this was suitable for treatment, a considerable gulf would remain.

Residual waste

You can actually produce an analysis of residual waste treatment from Ricardo-AEAs numbers. They found that 12.6m tonnes (26%) of C&I waste is currently either landfilled or incinerated in England. Applying the same proportion to the rest of the UKs C&I arisings yields another 2.5m tonnes. Add 12m tonnes of local authority residual waste and you have 27m tonnes to tackle.

Ricardo-AEA estimate UK residual waste treatment capacity in 2020 will be 23.7m tonnes, leaving a capacity gap of just over 3m tonnes assuming that absolutely no unavoidable landfill remains and making conservative assumptions about arisings and recycling rates.

There isnt going to be a 15m tonne capacity gap for residual waste treatment in 2020. Well be setting out our latest analysis in the fifth edition of our infrastructure review later this month.