The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published its latest progress report at the end of last week: http://hmccc.s3.amazonaws.com/2012%20Progress/CCC_Progress%20Rep%202012_Chapter-7-Waste.pdf
The huge (and hugely expensive) government commitments to de-carbonise the economy mean that every last drop of emission savings have to be squeezed out of every sector. The waste sector has already done a tremendous job at reducing its emissions and will continue to do so as more material is diverted from landfill. The focus should be on ensuring high levels of effective front-end recycling coupled with incentives to drive improved efficiency for energy recovery processes for that residual waste which cannot be recycled.
The CCC recognises the good work of the waste sector, and I think tries to draw attention to some of the (significant) uncertainties around emission savings from waste. As you'd expect, they call for more to be done and think that there is scope for further cost-effective savings to be made from sending increased amounts of food waste to anaerobic digestion.
I personally don't find the analysis on AD costs to be credible. These plants are generally small-scale and localised and rely on double ROC subsidies to make a return. Digestate markets continue to be limited, and large increases in quantities of this material could end up with nowhere to go.
The government however has clearly picked AD as a winning technology and is probably unlikely to deviate from its course.
It is never completely clear to me what role the CCC envisages energy from waste playing in the de-carbonised power sector of the future. Efw may have high emissions relative to the proposed grid average of the future (the CCC reckons it will have to be 50g/kWh by 2050 I think), but of course has a significant carbon benefit relative to landfill. Does this count as part of the power sector, or the waste sector?
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