Yale Environment 360
- Beth Gardiner
For years, European countries have built “waste-to-energy” incinerators,
saying new technology minimized pollution and boosted energy production.
But with increasing concern about the plants’ CO2 emissions, the EU is now
withdrawing support for these trash-burning facilities.
|
A waste-to-energy incinerator at Haverton Hill near
Middlesbrough, England. Islandstock / Alamy Stock Photo
|
For decades, Europe has poured millions of tons of its trash into
incinerators each year, often under the green-sounding label “waste to
energy.” Now, concerns about incineration’s outsized carbon footprint
and fears it may undermine recycling are prompting European Union
officials to ease their long-standing embrace of a technology that once
seemed like an appealing way to make waste disappear.
The EU is in the process of cutting off funding for new incinerators,
but there’s little sign most existing ones —
currently
consuming 27 percent of the bloc’s municipal waste — will close any time
soon. And, even without EU financial support, new plants are in the
works, many in southern and eastern European countries that have
historically incinerated less than long-standing waste-to-energy
proponents such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian
nations.
Meanwhile, across the English Channel, post-Brexit Britain is
charging ahead with proposals for dozens of new garbage-burning
projects.
Without a more decisive change of course, critics argue, that adds up to
an existential threat both to Europe’s promise to slash carbon emissions
to net-zero by midcentury and its dreams of a “circular economy” in
which reuse and recycling largely take the place of waste disposal.
Britain burns nearly half of its waste — more than it recycles.
“Burning plastic in a climate emergency, that’s insane,” said Georgia
Elliott-Smith, an environmental engineer and Extinction Rebellion
activist who is suing the British government over its decision to
exclude incinerators from its new emissions trading system.
Plastic,
hard to recycle and ubiquitous in garbage, is made from fossil fuel
derivatives and emits carbon dioxide when burned, accounting for a
substantial chunk of incineration’s climate damage.
In a
case scheduled to be
heard in the High Court this month, Elliott-Smith contends Britain
violated its Paris Agreement commitments by omitting the waste-to-energy
sector from the market it created when it left the European greenhouse
gas emissions trading system as part of its divorce from the E.U.
While
she also argues the new system is too weak to shrink Britain’s carbon
footprint, including incinerators could, in principle, put a cost on
their emissions.
Sinking billions of pounds into new incinerators now could lock Britain
into decades of garbage-burning and make it harder for cash-strapped
local authorities to boost recycling and composting rates, she said.
The
country already burns
nearly 45 percent
of its waste — more than it recycles, the Channel 4 show Dispatches
recently
reported. “The way incineration works, it skews the economics of waste by its
very existence,” Elliott-Smith said. “Once you build the beast, you’ve
got to keep feeding it.”
Worries that incinerators sicken those who live near them —
disproportionately poor, and people of color — have long dogged the
industry. Wealthy nations such as Sweden and Denmark, which rely heavily
on waste-to-energy plants, say their sophisticated emissions treatment
systems mean such concerns are misplaced.
But critics note many nations
lack the resources for the best pollution-control systems. Dangerous
emissions such as dioxin and particulate matter sometimes go unreported,
and enforcement is often porous, environmentalists
say.
|
Garbage headed to an incinerator's oven in Helsinki,
Finland. ALESSANDRO RAMPAZZO/AFP via Getty Images
|
The climate concerns are newer, crystallized in a
report
the consulting firm Eunomia produced for ClientEarth, an advocacy group.
It found that British incinerators’ power generation was more
carbon-intensive than electricity from natural gas, and second only to
coal. Overall, European incinerators pumped out an
estimated
95 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2018, about 2 percent of
total
emissions.
That footprint helped prompt EU officials to drop incineration from a
draft of important green investment guidelines, known as the
“sustainable finance taxonomy,” expected to be formally adopted this
month.
Not only can trash-burning plants no longer get subsidies
designated for environmentally beneficial projects, they have also been
cut off from other major EU funding streams. And the European Parliament
has urged member nations to minimize incineration.
“It looks like things are really changing in Brussels,” said Janek Vähk,
a coordinator at Zero Waste Europe, a network of advocacy groups.
Leaders, in his view, have “started understanding that incineration is a
big source of greenhouse gases.”
For its part, the industry says it is unfair to compare its carbon
emissions directly with those of plants whose main function is to
generate power.
“The primary reason why we exist is for waste treatment,
not energy production,” said Agnė Razgaitytė, a spokeswoman for the
Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants, or
CEWEP, an industry group. “So it’s
not exactly comparable in the same way.”
EU waste incineration doubled from 1995 to 2019, to 60 million tons
annually.
Without incineration, she said, landfill costs tend to rise, increasing
the danger of European trash leaving the continent, and ultimately being
burned in uncontrolled settings or littering beaches and waterways.
And
landfills have their own climate impact — any organic waste in them
generates the potent greenhouse gas methane as it decays. What’s more,
incinerator operators salvage metals from the ash left over after
burning, allowing their reuse.
“We’re at home in the circular economy,” Razgaitytė said. “We do give
value to the waste that otherwise would be just lost.” No matter how
much is recycled and composted, she added, there will always be
something left over: “I don’t think the waste-to-energy sector as such
is going out of business any time soon.”
The EU’s shift comes after a building spree that
doubled
EU countries’ municipal waste incineration between 1995 and 2019, to 60
million tons annually. Such plants now provide power to 18 million
Europeans and heat to 15 million, the industry
says.
Individual countries remain free to fund and commission new
incinerators. Those plants still make money from waste-disposal fees and
by selling electricity and, in some places, heat.
In some countries,
operators can still claim subsidies designed to support renewable
energy, as long as they burn waste that has been collected in separate
streams so recyclable or compostable material is not incinerated.
|
The Amager Bakke waste incinerator in Copenhagen, Denmark
has a ski slope on its roof. Oliver Förstner / Alamy Stock Photo
|
What’s more, Vähk warned, the EU’s aim for countries to landfill no more
than 10 percent of municipal waste by 2035 will unintentionally bolster
incinerators’ appeal. “There’s a lot of pressure on minimizing
landfill,” he said. That’s worrying, “because we don’t want to move from
landfilling to incineration.”
It all comes as the EU is
pushing
to reduce waste, particularly plastic, by ratcheting up targets for
composting and recycling, mandating that plastic bottles contain 30
percent recycled content by 2030, and banning — as of this July —
single-use items such as cutlery, cups, and stirrers.
The EU has also
adopted a new “circular economy”
plan
that aims in the longer term to encourage better product design so reuse
and recycling are easier.
Continued incineration, critics argue, could threaten those goals. Once
built, they say, incinerators cannibalize recycling, because municipal
governments are often locked in by contracts that make it cheaper to get
their rubbish burned than to sort it for recyclers.
One nation now grappling with the legacy of its long embrace of
incineration is Denmark. The country, one of Europe’s biggest waste
producers, built so many incinerators that by 2018 it was
importing a million tons of trash.
The plants generate 5 percent of the country’s electricity and nearly
a quarter of the heat in the local networks, known as district heating
systems, said Mads Jakobsen, chairman of the Danish Waste Association,
which represents municipal authorities and waste companies.
Pushing to meet ambitious carbon-cutting goals, Danish lawmakers agreed
last year to shrink incineration capacity by 30 percent in a decade,
with the closure of seven incinerators, while dramatically expanding
recycling.
“It’s time to stop importing plastic waste from abroad to
fill empty incinerators and burn it to the detriment of the climate,”
said Dan Jørgensen, the
country’s climate minister.
But in focusing only on Denmark’s own carbon footprint, Jakobsen said,
the country’s politicians had failed to consider what would happen to
the waste Denmark turns away. And with loan repayments still due on many
plants, he said, “I’m also concerned about the stranded costs. Who’s
going to answer for those costs? Will it be the citizens in my
municipality?”
In central and eastern Europe, “there is strong pressure and a lucrative
market for new incinerators,” says a critic.
Two regions of Belgium are also seeking to reduce incineration capacity.
But few other parts of Europe are following suit. Indeed, some countries
are planning new plants. Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania landfill most of
their waste, and will probably need more incineration capacity, said
Razgaitytė. Italy and Spain are among the others that may also build new
plants, she said.
In central and eastern Europe, “there is very strong pressure and a
lucrative market for new incinerators,” said Paweł Głuszyński, of the
Society for Earth, a Polish advocacy group. Poland has about nine
incinerators now, plus a similar number of cement plants that use
processed waste as fuel, he said.
Around 70 new projects are seeking
approval, he said, including proposals to convert old coal plants to
burn garbage instead. Poor enforcement in Poland means emissions of
toxins such as dioxins and furans often reach hazardous levels,
Głuszyński said, but
tightening
EU rules may help,
Britain, too, seems intent on pushing ahead with an expansion of
burning, with dozens of new projects under consideration. Collectively,
they would
double
current incineration capacity.
There are hints, though, that some of what’s on the drawing board may
not materialize. Wales
said
last month it would put a moratorium on large new waste-to-energy
plants, and consider an incineration tax.
In February, Kwasi Kwarteng,
Britain’s secretary for business, energy and industrial strategy,
refused an application for a new incinerator in Kent, east of London,
although he allowed expansion of an existing plant. In his decision, he
said the project could hamper local recycling, reasoning that encouraged
incinerator opponents.
|
Demonstrators protest the continued operation of the
incinerator in Edmonton in north London: STOP THE EDMONTON INCINERATOR
|
In Cambridgeshire, the leafy, well-off home of the University of
Cambridge, plans for another plant stalled in the face of vocal
opposition from residents and local politicians.
But such decisions can
raise uncomfortable questions. The North London Waste Authority, which
manages waste for seven boroughs in the capital, plans to expand, and
extend the life of, an aging incinerator in the neighborhood of
Edmonton, which has a large Black and immigrant population and is one of
the country’s lowest-income areas.
“Why is (incineration) not good enough for Cambridgeshire, but it’s good
enough for Edmonton, which is poor, racially diverse and already suffers
with a lot of pollution?” asked Delia Mattis, an activist with the local
Black Lives Matter group. “There’s racism in the planning.”
Other
groups, including
Stop the Edmonton Incinerator Now, are also working to close the facility, which had been nearing the
end of its life before the overhaul was proposed.
The neighborhood — where men’s
life expectancy
is 8.8 years shorter, and women’s 5.7 years shorter, than in wealthier
parts of its borough — “is like a nonstop conveyor belt of trucks” going
to and from the incinerator, Mattis said.
A
report
from Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative arm, found British
incinerators are three times more likely to be sited in the poorest and
most racially mixed areas as in the wealthiest, whitest ones.
Whatever countries decide on incineration, cutting waste will also
require addressing its source, by pushing producers to make less
throwaway packaging, and longer-lasting goods, said Jakobsen, the Danish
waste association official.
“Better design, better production, more
recyclable material,” he said. “That’s a huge task that has not been
fully addressed.”
Links
