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The UK’s Residual Waste in Numbers
October 31, 2011

The UK’s waste management industry is likely to have a surplus of residual waste treatment facilities by 2020. But right now the annual capacity gap is of 22 million tonnes of untreated waste being sent to landfills, indicating there is “significant opportunity” for investment for many years to come.

According to report published by consultancy firm Eunomia during the ‘Investing in Resource Recovery’ event at the London Stock Exchange on Friday (October 28), the UK is narrowing the gap of residual waste arising against treated and recycled waste, such that by 2020 we are likely to be in a situation of overcapacity by 2020.

The UK’s residual waste segment can be summarised as follows:

  • GB had over 35.4 million tonnes of residual waste arisings from local authority collected (LAC), commercial and industrial sources in 2009/10;

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  • Currently, GB has around 13.1 million tonnes of residual waste treatment capacity either ‘operating’ or ‘under construction’;

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  • This capacity is made up of 28 dedicated incineration facilities, 4 gasification facilities, 26 pre-treatment facilities (using either mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) or autoclave technologies), 12 Waste Incineration Directive (WID) compliant biomass facilities and 6 cement kilns processing solid recovered fuels (SRF), as shown spatially in Figure 2;

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  • There is currently a capacity gap of 22.3 million tonnes (per annum) between residual waste arisings and the amount of treatment infrastructure capacity either ‘operating’ or ‘under construction’;

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  • This capacity gap will be reduced to 11.1 million tonnes (per annum) if the 11.2 million tonnes of waste treatment capacity that has planning consent reaches financial close and begins construction; and

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  • Planning consent is being sought for a further 3.5 million tonnes of waste treatment capacity. If this was consented and then reached financial close, the capacity gap would be reduced to 7.2 million tonnes (per annum).

    • These finds were published on Eunomia’s Residual Waste Infrastructure Review: High Level Analysis which is now available for download at http://www.eunomia.co.uk/product.php/113/1/residual_waste_infrastructure_review/ab5461b5b59bfe38a604e96136511a89. There are two versions a free one which contains a large part of this research, whilst a more detailed version with regional assessments is available for online purchase.

    Report lead author, Adam Baddeley, said:

    “The research shows that, in some regions, there may be an over-supply of treatment infrastructure by 2015. In other regions however, it appears that there will remain significant opportunities for investment for many years to come. This information will enable investors, project developers, local waste authorities, technology providers, waste management companies, utility companies and other stakeholders to quickly determine whether a particular project is likely to be able to secure sufficient waste input which in turn will inform consentability and bankability”.

     

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