TACKLING climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In response, the UK has committed to bring greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 requiring a step change at local, regional and national level and Northern Ireland must play its part.
How we view and treat our waste can play an important role in this pursuit. The recent UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) report on decarbonisation in Northern Ireland recognised that when it comes to waste, chief among the challenges is to reduce methane emissions from landfill.
Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 and accounts for over 95 per cent of total waste emissions. As well as reducing the amount of waste generated, it is critical that we divert methane producing waste from landfill and maximise recycling.
The current EU Circular Economy Package, adopted into UK law, has set ambitious recycling targets of 65 per cent by 2035 alongside a 10 per cent landfill cap. That is a significant challenge on both fronts and CEWEP calculations suggest that even if the EU28 (including UK) achieve these targets there will still be a capacity gap of 41 million tonnes of residual waste left untreated by 2035. The importance of energy from waste (EfW) facilities therefore is clear.
Closer to home, worryingly the CCC states that the lack of EfW facilities in Northern Ireland, unlike elsewhere in the UK and Europe, may restrict our ability to deal with waste diverted from landfill in the near term.
Households her produce almost 500,000 tonnes of waste annually that is currently landfilled or exported at significant cost to fuel European EfW plants. A recent Grant Thornton report estimated that practice is costing our councils more than £16m a year based on an average 138,183 tonnes shipped over the last three years.
This doesn’t account for the lost value in terms of energy recovery or its potential to unlock other carbon saving technologies. More European countries are introducing import taxes on ‘foreign waste’, which will make this practice even more uneconomical and unsustainable.
Our European neighbours can testify to the benefits of modern EfW technology in the climate change fight.
They can generate energy efficiently and help avoid the emissions associated with extracting and burning virgin fossil fuels. The energy produced is part-renewable due to more than 50 per cent organic content in municipal waste.
It is estimated that this results in a net carbon saving of approximately 200kg of CO? per tonne of waste diverted from landfill. Germany also proves that this technology can complement recycling. In 2018 they achieved a 67 per cent recycling rate alongside 31 per cent EfW treatment, leaving only 2 per cent reaching landfill.
The enabling nature of EfW projects to support wider decarbonisation technologies such as hydrogen fuel production, alternative fuels and district heating schemes is also increasingly apparent.
Indaver, for example, has recently announced plans to add a hydrogen generation unit alongside our existing EfW in County Meath to produce clean hydrogen fuel for buses, waste vehicles and the local natural gas network.
Indaver is also partnering with others in Antwerp to deliver sustainable methanol production and one of the largest steam heating schemes in Europe.
By learning from our European neighbours and investing in best practice waste infrastructure we can unlock the potential from our waste and help tackle the climate emergency head on.
:: Jackie Keaney is commercial director of Indaver (Ireland and UK) and vice-president of the Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP)
