MPs call for a ‘better use’ of EfW facilities

MPs have called for stronger government leadership to make better use of energy from waste (EfW) facilities when dealing with the country’s waste.

In a report out today, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee called on the government to “make better use of energy recovery options such as local heating for homes.”

The ‘Waste management in England’ report stated that sourcing appropriate waste feedstock on a consistent basis remains a “significant challenge” for anaerobic digestion (AD) operators.

The report is the result of an enquiry set up in March this year, triggered by Defra’s decision to step back from waste management last year.

The committee recommended that, where food waste is separately collected, it should be treated at local AD plants whenever possible to address the problem of sourcing waste feedstock.

It added that the government should encourage the use of “heat outputs from incinerators for local district heating for buildings and/or for industrial processes to gain maximum efficiencies”.

Technical director of the Renewable Energy Association (REA), Jeremy Jacobs, echoed the calls in the report that Defra “should be doing more, not less, to realise the potential of waste-based renewables”.

He added: “We could be using this valuable resource here to generate very cheap low carbon heat and power in conventional combustion plants, or to boost development of cutting edge UK technology like gasification and pyrolysis, instead of shipping it off to the continent.”

The Institution of Civil Engineers also welcomed the report’s findings, calling for a move towards a ‘circular economy’ and a need to ‘focus on the bigger picture’.

Chair of the ICE resource management expert panel, Nigel Mattravers, said: “ICE proposes the creation of a single Office for Resource Management to sit within BIS, so it can promote resource management as a driver of economic growth.”