Article: Extend Landfill Tax to incineration, says White Paper

The UK should price emissions from waste disposal, including landfill and incineration, to help reach the country’s target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to a new white paper by the Zero Carbon Campaign released on 21 September.

Launched at an event organised by Green Alliance, the new white paper outlines how the UK Government can introduce carbon pricing across waste, electricity, heating, aviation, shipping, industry and agriculture to reduce carbon emissions.

It calls upon the UK Government to increase landfill tax to reach £75 per tonne of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) by 2035 and to extend it so that it includes emissions from waste incineration, as well as emissions from other energy-from-waste (EfW) plants.

The white paper estimates that increasing this tax could bring in £27 billion by 2030 which the government could then put towards innovation and investment in green technologies, including de-risking early stage deployment of carbon capture and storage in energy from EfW facilities.