(GUF) WASTE TO ENERGY TO WASTE TO ENERGY

Inspiration (Yves Tanguy) - link

Across the UK, local authorities are being encouraged to become more sustainable. They're being asked to reduce carbon emissions, encouraged to introduce electric vehicle fleets, expected to improve recycling rates and asked to do all of this while facing significant financial pressure.

At the same time, the waste industry is investing heavily in infrastructure that generates electricity from waste. Anaerobic Digestion facilities generate renewable electricity from food waste. Energy from Waste facilities generate electricity from residual waste that cannot currently be recycled. Together, these facilities produce substantial amounts of power every day.

This is not simply a theoretical discussion. In the private sector, companies such as Grundon Waste Management have already demonstrated the principle by using electricity generated from waste to help power electric waste collection vehicles so the concept clearly works and the relationship already exists.

My point is that local authorities pay for waste collections; pay for waste treatment which generate electricity and the councils then purchase electricity separately to charge their electric vehicle fleets, and for an industry that talks endlessly about closing loops: this appears to be one of the most obvious loops left open.

If governments are serious about reducing emissions, should electricity generated from municipal waste and used to power municipal collection vehicles attract the same taxation and charging structure as electricity supplied through conventional commercial arrangements? After all, the public sector has already paid to collect the waste. It has already paid to treat the waste. The waste has generated the electricity. The electricity is then being used to support a public service.

Is there a case for recognising that circular relationship through reduced taxation, network charges or other fiscal incentives? Not as a subsidy, not as a grant but simply as recognition that the waste itself has already created the energy.

I fully appreciate that electricity markets, taxation, grid infrastructure and commercial arrangements are more complicated than this simple explanation. However, complexity shouldn't stop us asking sensible questions and if governments are serious about decarbonisation and if councils are serious about reducing costs, shouldn't we be looking for ways to connect these two objectives or is the phrase "circular economy" just more of the waste industry's smoke and mirrors?

Perhaps this is what a genuinely circular energy system should look like: not simply turning waste into electricity, but turning waste into electricity that directly supports the collection and management of that waste. The technology already exists. The vehicles increasingly exist. The energy already exists. The waste certainly exists.

So if the waste can generate the electricity, and the electricity can power the vehicles, what exactly is stopping us from joining the dots? SEAT - landfill biomethane - link - more like this (waste to energy) - link - more like this (waste EV) - link