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EU court advisor untangles incinerator status Posted: 27 May 2008 05:09 AM CDT An EU court of justice advisor has delivered a recommended interpretation of the status of waste-to-energy plants under the bloc's 2000 waste incineration directive. But the analysis does not reach firm conclusions and leaves judges wide scope to interpret the law when they reach a final verdict in the coming months. Advocate general Juliane Kokott has been investigating a case referred to the court from Sweden, where a municipal power supply company in the town of Gävle wants to build an extra boiler at a combined heat and power plant. The boiler will burn exclusively domestic and commercial waste material. The local authority granted planning permission for the new boiler as a waste coincineration plant on the grounds that it will generate electricity and heat. But the regional authority says the boiler is an incineration plant because its "main purpose" is to treat waste. The power supply firm contests this; local judges have asked the Luxembourg court to interpret the EU's incinertaion directive on this point. The difference in classification is important: coincineration and incineration plants are subject to different standards under the directive. Perhaps more significantly, following two highly controversial EU court rulings five years ago, coincineration plants are also eligible to contribute to EU waste recovery targets, while waste incineration is not. Ms Kokott does not reach unequivocal conclusions in an opinion published last Thursday. She says the decision on whether the boiler's main purpose is to produce energy or dispose of waste should be based on "objective elements". If a new boiler has been "technically conceived" to burn only waste, or if the revenues earned from burning waste are greater than the revenues from selling energy, or if the plants is part of a waste treatment network, this suggests it should be an incineration plant. But if the plant has been built to use burn waste as a cheaper alternative to more expensive fuels, then it should be classed as coincineration. She does not suggest a classification for the proposed Swedish installation. But she says the nature of the company operating the plant - in this case an energy provider - is "secondary" and should not determine the classification. As a subsidiary point Ms Kokott says individual boilers should in principle be seen as separate installations and assessed separately. This would mean that different parts of a single power plant could be classed differently under the incineration directive. But she also says that in some cases several boilers could be "linked" and seen as a single installation, provided that this does not undermine the environmental aims of the law. [b]Follow-up[/b]: [url=http://curia.europa.eu/]European court of justice[/url], tel: +352 43031 and advocate general's opinion in [url=http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=en&Submit=Submit&docrequire=alldocs&numaff=c-251/07]case C-251/07[/url].

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