The UK is still on course to exceed the waste infrastructure it will need in the future, according to Eunomia Research & Consulting, especially if it is to achieve the higher levels of recycling envisaged in the European Commission’s Circular Economy Package.

The environmental consultancy published the latest update of its Residual Waste Infrastructure Review last week (27 December), in which it claims that the capacity of facilities that are either currently operational, being built or are expected to be operational by 2020/21 will total 23.1 million tonnes per year, exceeding the 22.7 million tonnes of residual waste expected to be produced in that year.

The previous update of the review, published in June, predicted that overcapacity would be reached by 2019/20. The update before that, released in November 2014, concluded that overcapacity of 2.5 million tonnes in 2018/19 could grow to 16.4 million tonnes in 2030/31.

Data from local authorities’ annual WasteDataFlow returns, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ (Defra) latest commercial and industrial (C&I) data and Eunomia’s in-house Facilities Database, which holds information on all residual treatment facilities in the UK, is used to inform the Residual Waste Infrastructure Review, which is updated twice every year.

The report focuses entirely on waste which is suitable for treatment by residual treatment plants, including incinerators, mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) facilities, and gasifiers, but excludes construction and demolition waste and other unsuitable wastes, which Eunomia says have been included in some other estimates of national capacity requirements.

Conflicting findings

Following on from several other reports that claimed the UK would not reach waste treatment overcapacity anytime soon, waste management company Biffa released a report in September that stated that the capacity gap ‘will not disappear completely’ as market forces will lead to a natural balance of capacity. Instead, it predicted that the current capacity gap of 15 million tonnes per year could be reduced to 4.36 million tonnes per year by 2025 with a progressive circular economy.

Eunomia’s December update took the Biffa report into consideration and made a number of changes ‘to understand the sensitivity to some variables’.

A ‘low recycling scenario’ was added to assess the impact should the UK not reach a 65 per cent municipal recycling rate by 2030 and commercial and industrial waste recycling continue at expected 2020 levels. The capacity estimate for the number of facilities was also revised downwards to reflect recent data and performance expectations, while all facilities other than those operational, under construction or which have reached financial close were excluded from the data. These changes pushed the estimated date for overcapacity back by a year.

Review ‘refutes’ alternative predictions

Eunomia’s report concludes that the review ‘refutes’ the findings of other commentators (including the Green Investment Bank, Ricardo-AEA and SUEZ) that claim there is scope for significant additional investment in UK residual waste treatment infrastructure. Indeed, it finds that the residual waste market is rapidly becoming more competitive, especially when recent increases in waste export are taken into consideration.

According to the consultancy, its studies agree with other reports in terms of current capacity, but differing conclusions result from ‘pairing a similar capacity estimate to Eunomia’s with a higher estimate of residual waste; or a similar estimate to Eunomia’s assessment of available waste with a lower figure for capacity’.

The Residual Waste Infrastructure Review’s lead author, Adam Baddeley, said: “When you focus on the overall conclusions of the reports, they appear consistent with one another, and Eunomia looks like the odd one out. However, breaking them down and looking separately at their estimates of capacity and arisings produces a rather different picture.

“The interesting question isn’t – ‘Why are Eunomia’s conclusions different?’ Rather, it’s ‘Why, despite disagreeing so significantly on their assumptions, do all of the other reports reach the same conclusions?’”

The full update of Eunomia Research and Consulting’s Residual Waste Infrastructure Review can be downloaded from the company’s website.