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22 Evaluation of Opportunities for Converting Indigenous UK Wastes to Wastes and Energy AEA/ED45551/Issue 1 2 Introduction The Prime Minister announced at the Labour Conference in September 2008 that he wants the current target of a 60 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, to be raised to 80 percent. He also called for an end to the dictatorship of oil and a transformation in our use of energy. Cuts of this magnitude imply a step change in the energy infrastructure of the country, and the generation of energy and fuels from waste sources can play a major role in delivering this step change. The National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC) is the UK's national centre for the development and support of renewable materials, technologies and fuels. It was established in 2003, and has already done considerable work to establish supply chains and markets for these products. The NNFCC does not currently have a defined policy on waste. In order to develop this, it needs an upto-date picture of the current waste situation, and the opportunities for utilising this waste to generate energy and fuels. The NNFCC has tasked AEA with delivering such a study, which is an important element in developing its position in this area. The findings will enable the NNFCC to develop an appropriate and effective insight into the waste situation and market in the UK, and how it might be used as a resource to derive energy and fuels. The NNFCC’s current focus is materials and energy from crops, and as a proportion of the UK’s waste arisings originate from agricultural activities, the opportunity therefore exists to develop a strong and coherent position on the utilisation of these wastes to generate energy and fuels. Sustainable development is a cause for increasing concern within the waste sector. The main concerns are focussed around: • global warming methane gas from landfill sites; • natural resource depletion, and; • local environmental pollution to land, water and air. The outcome of these concerns has been the recognition at international, European and national levels that large-scale reliance on landfilling of waste is unsustainable. This has resulted in the introduction of legislation at both European and national levels that promotes a waste treatment hierarchy that places of waste prevention and minimisation as the most desirable option and disposal to landfill the least. This hierarchy is set out in the well known diagram below.
Evaluation of Opportunities for Converting Indigenous UK Wastes to Wastes and Energy AEA/ED45551/Issue 1 Figure 3 Waste hierarchy 2 In the current waste hierarchy, energy generation is one form of recovery. Such a classification recognises that many of the other options are, at present, more resource efficient than the technologies used to produce energy from waste. However, it is recognised that such classifications may alter in the future as technologies that have better resource efficiencies become available. This report identifies these technologies, outlines their potential and explores the barriers that may stand in the way of adoption. Anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis and gasification are typical of these technologies and have the potential to be more resource efficient ways of extracting energy and higher value products from waste. This can be in the form of electricity, combined heat and power, methane for transport fuel or grid injection, chemicals and liquid transport fuels. Although progress has been identified in the UK and elsewhere these technologies remain technically less well developed than conventional methods and may demand a degree of upstream fuel preparation that will be innovative in the UK. To fulfil the objectives of the task set for this study we therefore need to understand a number of aspects of the current and future waste industry. The most important are • the character and extent of the waste resource, • the status of those energy technologies with improved resource efficiency, • the demands they place on upstream waste management, • and the benefits that their adoption might bring. Our report is therefore structured as follows: Waste Arisings It is important to establish a baseline for the arisings of waste in the UK, particularly on a regional basis, as many of the potential solutions will require stable, locally sourced feed stocks for a considerable number of years. Total arisings for the three categories of controlled wastes are well recorded, for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), Commercial and Industrial waste (C&I) and Construction and Demolition waste (C&D). Within these categories the composition proportions have been the focus of a number of studies, particularly for MSW. Wastes that do not fall within these categories are less well recorded and studied, and consequently less accurate arisings figures are generated. 2 Image taken from Waste in Context, Select Committee on Science and Technology Sixth Report, July 2008, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldsctech/163/16305.htm 23
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South East 327 - - 55% of MSW by 20
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Appendix 3 MBT Methods Specific in
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Figure 27 Orchid Environmental proc
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