Page 25 - Waste-to-Energy in the Danube Strategy Region. Challenges and Prospects

and benefits, PPP attracts funding from the private sector to ensure public infrastructure and

services. Moreover, resource efficiency is improved through shorter construction time together
with lower capital and operating costs (Rogoff and Screve 2011b, Arbulú et al. 2017).

Because WtE technologies are expensive not only during the building phase but also

during the phase of operation, return on investment is also crucial. In this regard, a project’s cost

structure should be carefully considered, both in terms of capital and operating costs. On the one

hand, capital costs consist of expenditures for land, facility construction, technology equipment,
engineering, installation, permitting and implementation. On the other hand, operating costs are

influenced by labour costs, costs of chemicals and utilities, maintenance and repair expenses,

emissions testing and ash disposal (Rogoff and Screve 2011b, Arbulú et al. 2017). Additional
factors such as heat/electricity pricing and disposal also have a significant impact on ROI. This is

especially true in the case of private ownership, for which profitability is absolutely critical.

A WtE plant should also run continuously because swift heating and cooling can damage

the units and increase the operating and maintenance costs (Rogoff and Screve 2011a). To ensure
regular operation of the facility, some states with overcapacities have to import waste from other

countries. For example, Austria imports waste mainly from Italy and Slovenia and Germany from

Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, Britain and others. The impending problem is that European states with

WtE overcapacities cannot import waste from countries with insufficient incineration capacities
(i.e. in Central and Eastern Europe) because the price that municipalities pay for local waste

disposal is significantly lower than the price of incineration abroad; thus, there is no incentive (The

Wall Street Journal 2015, Wilts and von Gries 2014). The economic challenge, in this case, arises

when states are pushed to import waste from more distant places than from neighbouring
countries. Importing waste from one side of Europe to another is expensive, unecological and

impractical.

WtE are capital-intensive projects requiring supporting economic instruments for their

faster dissemination. Such instruments include direct tools, such as subsidies, grants and loan
guarantees, as well as indirect measures, such as high landfill taxes. Implementation of such

measures improves the competitiveness of WtE technologies and helps to address the economic

Project co-funded by the European Union
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