At the meeting in Munich in mid-May, there were very stimulating discussions and inspiring sharing of experiences, which I am happy to share.
The main topic of the day was how to meet the ambitious European waste management targets and sharing best practices and practices in promoting politically exposed waste-to-energy schemes.
The first speaker, Dr. Ella Stengler, Director of CEWEP, described how Europe is doing in meeting its waste-to-energy targets. From the development so far and its extrapolation, it is clear that the expansion of ZEVO is very gradual. This can also be seen in the development of the landfill rate in the graph below. Dr. Stengler further reported that it is necessary and appropriate to share experiences in removing barriers to deployment of this technology, especially in countries with minimal ZEVO presence, to improve the situation.
As can be seen from the map, the Czech Republic is not the worst performer in the European benchmark – with 12% of energy use it is worse than the average. However, our national target for landfill diversion is significantly higher.
In his lecture, Alexander Kirchner, MBA, Director of Wien Energie DI, presented several inspiring examples. In Austria, they have a number of ZEVOs right in the heart of one of Europe’s most vibrant and visited cultural landmarks, Vienna. Austria currently achieves a 36% energy recovery rate for municipal waste, which is a strong anchor point for promoting the circular economy. You are most likely not used to such a sentence and rather feel that ZEVO is going against recycling. Alexander’s diagram below shows very briefly why ZEVO is a fulcrum.
Even the most sophisticated waste management produces waste that simply cannot be recycled for many different reasons. First of all, for hygienic reasons, because human health comes first. Alexander also presented this scheme in another form, where ZEVO is an integral element of the circular economy, which not only returns energy to the cycle, but also part of the waste that can be used as materials – metals or slag.
The key element in Austria, according to Alexander, was especially transparent and open discussion with the public, hand in hand with an architecturally interesting solution that does not disturb the character of the surrounding buildings.
Roger Kremers, who represented the Dutch company AVR at the meeting, stressed that the waste market is so interesting for the Netherlands that they are open to receiving waste from abroad. In practice, they have been doing this for a number of years, importing waste from the UK and Italy to their WEEE. The energy recovery of waste has been on a long-term upward trend in the Netherlands since the 1990s. years and has had to absorb major shocks associated with Brexit in recent years as significant changes have been made to the import of waste from abroad. The challenges of the Netherlands are thus very different from those of the Czech Republic.
Roger’s lecture was followed by Amalia Cerdá Lacaci, Director of Sustainability at TIRME, Spain. The map below shows that Spain is very heterogeneous in its landfill rates across regions. Unfortunately, no significant change is evident in the long term. However, it is also interesting to quantify the carbon footprint of landfill and energy recovery in the conditions of Spain, which is, after all, a warmer country. The estimated difference in CO2 savings is a staggering 245%.
Spain is thus facing a major challenge in the form of the need to double the capacity of the WEO and thus divert 3 million tonnes of electricity from the EU. tonnes of municipal waste from landfill.
The next speaker was Jakub Bator, a member of the board of Krakowski Holding Komunalny, who operate the ZEVO in Krakow, Poland.
Poland today is in a similar situation to the Czech Republic, facing a major transformation of its coal-fired power sector, is more northerly than the EU-27 average and still largely landfills. Poland has set tough targets – a maximum landfill rate of 30% by 2029, 20% by 2034 and 10% from 2035. This has had an impact on the business environment. Poland currently operates a WPP with a total capacity of 1,415 kt/year and is building several more facilities with a total capacity of 682 kt/year.
The last speaker of the CEWEP meeting was the guest of honour, Werner Bauer, Director of WtERT (Waste to Energy Research Technology Germany GmbH), who opened a deeper discussion on the crucial role of energy recovery in the strategy to reduce the carbon footprint. In fact, one of the most potent greenhouse gases is methane, which is released when decomposable waste is landfilled. Diversion of landfill to energy use, and thus to the significantly less problematic gas CO2, offers similar potential to diversion from fossil fuels, as described in the conclusions of the United Nations report https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/41108/methane_2030_SPM.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
So what can we take away from the meeting?
ZEVs play an important role in Europe as a key element of the circular economy.
In addition to the necessary legislative changes, the key to successful implementation is transparent and open communication with the public.
Even the most developed EU countries rely on a strong role for WEOs in the future.
Jan Krišpín, CEO of ORGREZ