Excellent article Keith. It's interesting to see how recently and rapidly things have changed. I'm looking forward to reading your next instalment! 

Excellent summary and analysis Paul and Richard - thank you. 

Hi Paul - interesting article but you seem to correlate gate fees in SE Asia in terms of MWh rather than tonnes of waste through the gate? You state that '... - in Pakistan, for example, EfW tariffs of are $100 per MWh....'. I take this to mean (in context) that there is a government-led scheme where they guarantee a price of $100/MWh for power produced from an EfW. However, that is not a gate fee but essentially a CfD for power offtake - two different things and without a true gate fee I would suggest financially non-viable. On a trip a couple of years ago to Malaysia I looked at their waste disposal arrangements and put very simply at $20/tonne landfill fee, EfW is a non-starter - so you are correct, something needs to change. It is no different in many parts of the USA. In that State (California) of environmental stewardship held up as the world's go-to for how it should be done, they are closing EfW's and using landfill instead. Two steps back comes to mind!

I am puzzled by the seeming lack of awareness that EfW reduces emissions. The alternative, which has been the historic norm in the UK, of landfill tonne for tonne of waste, produces more emissions than EfW. We think of waste as a problem, but Scandinavians think of waste as a resource. We should do the same, but sadly many are still living in the past and cannot think of waste as a resource to be carefully managed for the benefit of society, while thinking of emissions in the same way - as a resource rather than a problem, seems to be beyond their imagination. At Agile Energy we do this: take in raw residual waste, process it to remove any remaining recyclates, produce steam with the fuel that is left and export electricity to the grid, use the waste heat for affordable reliable district heating, produce hydrogen at off peak times, capture the CO2 from the flue gas and produce liquid fuels by combining the CO2 and the H2.

And the CCC want to stop our industry doing this? Who is advising these people? Do they only understand the stick when it comes to motivation? Here is my alternative statement:

"Implement a whole-systems approach to address Waste Management, including setting out the implications of continuing to waste resources by landfilling instead of a properly designed whole systems approach to utilize waste and emissions at Integrated Recycling and Resource Recovery Facilities (IRF's) for waste decarbonisation and confirming plans to capture and convert carbon emissions into circular economy low carbon-based products and fuels." 

Alf Robertson

Managing Director, Agile Energy Recovery Limited