The Danish ski slope incinerator, Amager Bakke, is surrounded by political controversy, experienced cost blow outs, IMPORTS WASTE and undermines safer more effective sustainable waste management solutions. In 2012, the project was denied a €534 million loan guarantee by the Copenhagen municipality due to concerns over its size and potential to undermine recycling efforts. Despite this, the project proceeded, allegedly influenced by political pressure, locking the municipality’s treatment of waste for incineration for 30-40 years and undermining its climate plan. It was agreed that the plant could not import waste. During construction in 2016, a failure in the installation of the combustion furnaces caused a 7 month delay and added €13 million in extra costs. Shortly after opening in 2017, one of the two incinerator lines broke down, affecting the plant’s ability to process waste. This forced the facility to temporarily store unprocessed waste until the issue was resolved. In 2018 a 14-day shutdown in 2017 due to a design error in the compensator, which couldn’t handle temperature changes. The facility has had to start importing waste from countries like the UK to keep it running at full capacity and justify the investment. The facility is basically too big and Denmark doesn’t have enough waste to keep the incinerator running on its own. “Copenhagen now has an incinerator plant that is double the size needed and that may need to import more and more foreign waste if it is to keep running. Given that it is financed through a 30-year loan, it is Danish taxpayers that will pay for the price of this waste.” Zero Waste Europe

References

• Zero Waste Europe - A Danish fiasco: the Copenhagen incineration plant
• www.prospectmagazine.co.uk - Copenhagen’s disastrous ski slope-cum-incinerator
• Australian Energy Coucil - Copenhill waste-to-energy plant: How hot is it?
• Bredsdorff, M. and Wittrup, S. ‘Hemmelige forhandlinger - Amager får sit kæmpe-anlæg til at brænde affald’. Ingenøren, 3 September 2012