Town Hall joins calls for carbon producers to pay ‘incineration tax’ – amid fears new scheme could cost councils ‘billions’

The Edmonton incinerator used by Hackney Council to dispose of waste. Photograph: Fin Fahey

The Town Hall says local government should not have to pay the carbon costs of waste disposal – after research suggested councils could be on the hook for “billions”.

The Local Government Association (LGA) on Wednesday said a new Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which puts a market price on carbon emissions, could cost councils up to £747 million by 2028.

By 2036, the figure could reach £1.1 billion, analysis suggests, “with a total cumulative cost over this period as high as £6.5 billion”.

After consulting on the scheme, the LGA said councils are calling on the government to instead pass on the costs to industries creating materials that emit CO2 when they are destroyed.

“Councils have no powers to reduce the amount of fossil-based material put on the market, and no meaningful levers to reduce the levels of fossil-based waste sent for incineration,” the LGA explained.

“By placing this cost on industry, the government will incentivise producers to reduce the level of fossil-based material created in the first place while also raising funding to reinvest in solutions such as carbon capture and storage technologies.”

A Hackney Council spokesperson told the Citizen it supported the LGA on the matter.

They said: “Many councils incinerate waste because it is less harmful to the environment than landfill.

“We have long advocated that producers should pay for the carbon cost of waste disposal, rather than the burden being placed on local councils and taxpayers, which will not effectively drive behaviour towards decarbonisation.”

The borough currently uses an incinerator based in Edmonton, covered by the North London Waste Authority (NLWA), for waste disposal.

At the last full council meeting, this strategy was questioned by Cllr Alastair Binnie-Lubbock (Green).

“Given the previous government’s temporary ban on new incinerators, will the council finally agree to rethink the dirty plans for a doubled incinerator in our neighbouring borough of Edmonton in favour of a financially-savvy, climate-proofed, pre-sorting plant which is badly needed in the UK and could raise money for Hackney?” he asked.

Mayor Caroline Woodley, who leads on climate change, environment and transport, argued such a facility in north London “would save only a small percentage of recyclable materials and would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to build and operate.”

She added: “It is worth noting that an energy recovery facility would still be needed to deal with the huge volume of waste.

“Regarding the north London Heat and Power Project, the existing plant is the oldest in Europe and near the end of its life.

“I hope you can appreciate that abandoning a half-built project would be a waste of council taxpayers’ money and would still leave us needing to find a way of disposing of our residents’ waste.”

She maintained that it was better to use a publicly-owned facility with “the best environmental standards in the country” to generate energy for local homes than it would be to export rubbish elsewhere.