Sweden – concrete proposal for tax on incineration of waste

International Wastenews, Waste Centre Denmark no. 2, 2005 reports that Sweden is considering the introduction of a tax on waste for incineration. The Swedish BRAS committee has presented an extensive report proposing that the fossil part of the waste should be subjected to both an energy tax and a CO2 tax. For other fuels there are already taxes per tonne of fossil carbon amounting to SEK 150 in energy tax and SEK 3,337 in CO2 tax. The content of fossil material in waste is set at 14%, of which 90% is calculated as carbon. This gives a tax of SEK 439 per tonne of waste.



The current rates favour combined heat and power plants with a reduction of as much as 79% compared with plants generating heat only, and this reduction is also proposed to apply to waste fired combined heat and power plants when their cm value (ratio between gross power generation and gross heat generation) is at 0.2 or above. It is proposed that such plants should be exempt from the energy tax and only pay around SEK 61-74 per tonne of waste in CO2 taxes. It appears to International Wastenews, that if an incineration plant has both a combined heat and power producing unit and one or more heat producing units, the reduction should apply only to the part of the waste that is incinerated in the combined heat and power producing unit.



The committee believes that the tax will not just be added to the gate fees, but that a certain market equalisation will take place, so that the tax level charged from the waste producers will settle somewhere between SEK 200 and 300 per tonne of waste.



The committee has also considered the introduction of a tax on SO2 emissions from the incineration plants, but has concluded that the yield would be too modest to outweigh the efforts.