Every year, about 15 million citizens in Europe receive heat generated in Waste-to-Energy plants via district heating. The plants most often use high efficiency cogeneration, which makes them and their district heating networks highly efficient and recovering heat and cooling that would otherwise be wasted.

Nine trade associations across various sectors published a joint-statement to positively consider Waste to Energy in the EU Taxonomy.

The statement was co-signed by nine associations representing several important sectors at the EU level: CEWEP, Cogen Europe, Energy-Cities, ESWET, Energy Technologies Europe, Euroheat & Power, European Aluminium, FEAD and Municipal Waste Europe.

The statement underlines the contribution of waste to energy towards a sustainable Europe, thanks to its role in energy and material self-sufficiency, its complementarity with recycling and renewable energy, but also with other industries.

The signatories said that they welcome the launch of the Platform on Sustainable Finance as Europe aims to achieve climate-neutrality by 2050. In this regard, the “EU Taxonomy” is a significant step to guide the green transition.

(The EU Taxonomy is a classification tool aimed at investors, companies and financial institutions to define environmental performance of economic activities across a wide range of industries, and sets requirements corporate activities must meet to be considered sustainable.)