How big is the efw sector?

Steve Lee has apparently claimed that the efw sector is worth £6bn now and will be worth an extraordinary £30bn in 10 years. Where on Earth does he get these figures from?

I think there is about 5m tonnes of material which goes to efw currently. It is preposterous to suggest that this is worth £6 billion under any definition. If that were so, then there would be £1,200 turnover/value/whatever per tonne of material processed. Nonsense.

Maybe he means the whole of the waste market is worth £6 billion. In which case I have no idea as to how he defines the sector. I reckon it's worth almost double that when you include the collection, sorting, treatment, energy recovery and disposal of municipal, commercial and industrial wastes.

He then claims that the market will grow fivefold in 10 years. That is pure fantasy and I don't think it helps anyone to bandy these kinds of figures around. I suspect that if absolutely everything went right for the development of new UK waste infrastructure we could add a maximum of about 1m tonnes of capacity per year. That is an extremely optimistic scenario which will probably never materialise. Even then we would be in a position of "only" doubling our total residual waste capacity during that timeframe.

I would love to know what assumptions Steve Lee has used to reach his predictions of 'meteoric' growth. I personally think that they must be ambitious to say the least.