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- Report n°4: How Much to Spend for the Protection of Health and Environment
Report n°4: How Much to Spend for the Protection of Health and Environment
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Table of contents
- Comparison Landfill « Incineration
- Results
- Comparison Landfill « Incineration
Results
A summary of the total damage cost for all the options is shown in Fig.7. More detailed results for some of the options can be found in Fig.8, showing the contribution of each stage and of the major pollutants (dioxins and toxic metals are shown as "Other"). The benefits of materials recovery make a small or negligible contribution to the total damage cost. The damage costs of waste transport, illustrated with an arbitrary choice of 100 km roundtrip by a 16 ton truck, is also negligible. The only significant contributions come from direct emissions (of the landfill or incinerator) and energy recovery.
For landfill the cost is dominated by greenhouse gas emissions because only about 70% the CH4 can be captured. Energy recovery from a landfill is not very significant. By contrast, energy recovery is crucial for the damage cost of incineration. Under favorable conditions (all heat produced by incinerator displaces coal and oil) the total external cost can even be negative, i.e. a net benefit. By contrast to most other countries, in France recovery of electricity does not bring significant benefits, because it is base load power and all the base load power is produced by nuclear; the options where it displaces coal or oil are not realistic in France (except near the border where the power can be exported) because these fuels are used only during the heating season.
The uncertainties are very large (see Fig.5) and they have different effects on different policy choices. Some comparisons, in particular those between landfill and incineration, are especially sensitive to this kind of uncertainty because greenhouse gases play such a large role for landfills.