Q&A - enfinium: Navigating the future of energy-from-waste

The UK, like most countries around the world, has a love-hate relationship with energy-from-waste (EfW). The four countries within the UK, accept and implement this technology to varying degrees, with Scotland on one end seemingly shunning these projects and England on the other, trying to promote new developments despite recent scares.

The mandatory carbon capture and storage (CCS) retrofit for all new plants appears to be a roadblock for this technology, with most developers seeking government grants to make the addition financially feasible, but enfinium appears to have found a model that works.

inspiratia sat down with Wayne Robertson, general counsel and executive committee lead for ESG, Net Zero, Policy, Regulation and Communications at enfinium, to go over the future of this technology and what England and other countries can do to help newer projects over the line.

enfinium is a portfolio company of Igneo Infrastructure Partners, the infrastructure asset management arm of Australian firm First Sentier. The company currently owns and operates four EfW plants across the country, with two more under construction.

What is the future of EfW in the UK?

As we set out in our recently published Net Zero Transition Plan, we believe the future for our sector lies in helping to deliver the decarbonisation of residual waste and the wider economy.

To date, the EfW sector has driven a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, primarily through the diversion of waste away from methane-emitting landfill – a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In the future, with carbon capture technology, EfW can not only finally decarbonise the UK's residual waste, but become a major source of negative emissions – putting the 'net' in net zero.

This is because around half of the residual waste the UK produces is biogenic, things like paper, wood, textiles and food waste. If we generate energy from this material at an EfW, and then capture and permanently sequester rather than release the associated emissions, this will result in a net reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

At enfinium, our plan is to generate 1.2 million tonnes of negative emissions each year by 2039, and a recent report by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies found that the sector as a whole could produce up to 8 million tonnes of negative emissions each year by 2050, a significant proportion of the volume the Committee on Climate Change believe will be required for the UK to achieve its statutory Net Zero commitment.

According to the Government's own projections, should the UK achieve its ambitious recycling targets our society will still be producing over 17 million tonnes of residual waste each year by 2042. This is more waste than was processed by the UK EfW fleet in 2023. Carbon capture offers us the opportunity to both decarbonise this enduring waste, and to generate the negative emissions the UK will require.

What is enfinium's view on government intervention in this sector, is it required to make CCUS commercially viable, or is that something the market can solve by itself?

Policy plays a pivotal role in our sector, and it will continue to do so. For example, there simply wouldn't be an EfW sector in the UK if it were not for the Landfill Tax. This simple measure has subsequently driven a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, and today around 3% of the UK's electricity production comes from waste we would have once simply buried in the ground.

Incoming measures such as the EfW sector's inclusion within the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will also – if implemented correctly – support further decarbonisation in the sector and underpin investment into carbon capture. Related to this, we were pleased to see the recently published consultation on incorporating carbon removals into the UK ETS – this will be a significant step towards market-led investment in decarbonisation technologies.

Government does, therefore in our view, have a very important role to play in CCUS going forward. To this end, we will welcome the opportunity to work with the next Government to make this happen.

What is enfinium's carbon removal plan?

In May this year, we announced our Net Zero Transition Plan which sets out how we intend to transform into a carbon removals business. The plan details how we will deploy CCS technology across all our facilities to achieve net zero emissions from our fleet by 2033 and produce 1.2 million durable carbon removals every year by 2039.

We are already making progress towards this goal. From July, we will have the first live CCS pilot at an EfW facility in the UK. We are also progressing our bid to connect our North Wales facility, Parc Adfer, into the HyNet Cluster as part of Track-1 of the UK Government's CCS Cluster Programme.

What is enfinium's view on the U in CCUS? What is the potential use?

We are exploring all potential options for the carbon we will in the future be capturing at our sites. Where sites are not located near industrial clusters or carbon transmission networks, for example, options to utilise this material could offer a more expeditious route to decarbonisation.

What do you see as the major challenges holding back permanent storage of CO2 on a commercial scale?

As with all nascent industries, there are challenges and risks which need to be overcome. Whilst the technology exists, the incentives to make the significant investments necessary for carbon capture are still developing. With high capital requirements and many cross-chain risks, government intervention will be a necessary enabler.

This could be through direct support, as is the case for the first industrial clusters which the last government set in motion. It will be hugely important for the next government to see these initial clusters to fruition. Looking ahead, however, it will not be feasible for governments to subsidise all carbon capture projects. Instead, policymakers need to take a holistic approach to support market-led investments.

From our perspective, one key policy to creating the right investment environment in the UK for carbon capture at our sites will be the incorporation of carbon removal credits into the UK ETS. This would provide greater certainty that carbon removals will generate the returns necessary to make the initial investment into carbon capture technology.

What are the company's hydrogen production plans?

Hydrogen is a highly versatile fuel that can be produced from a range of energy sources. When used as a fuel, its only by-product is water, so it can help reduce carbon emissions from transportation and industry.

We are exploring using our facilities to produce electrolytic hydrogen. For us, being able to alternate between power export and hydrogen production in the future would provide opportunities to maximise the value of the reliable, homegrown power we generate, as well as facilitating carbon savings for wider industry and transport. During periods of high renewable output our flexible, dispatchable sites would be able to switch between power export to the grid and hydrogen production. The low-carbon hydrogen we will produce at our facilities would subsequently be available to displace fossil-based fuels in heavy industry or transport. We could, for example, provide hydrogen refuel to the fleet of HGVs which deliver the residual waste to our facilities.