Attero Climate Neutral over 2019

Attero processes waste into secondary resources and renewable energy. During waste processing we emit fossil CO₂, but we also avoid fossil CO₂-emissions. When you balance these two out, Attero has achieved to be Climate Neutral over 2019. We have realized our goal by doing the following:

• EfW plants: Most CO₂-emissions is caused by incinerating non-recyclable waste. Disposed objects that are (partly) made from fossil resources such as non-recyclable plastics are transformed into energy. In this process fossil CO₂is emitted from the chimney. At the same time this process also leads the production of heat, electricity and green gas which would otherwise have been produced from coal or natural gas. Energy production from coal and natural gas lead to much higher CO₂-emissions, which we avoid with energy-from-waste, so we therefore incorporate them in our CO₂-footprint calculation. Attero also imports non-recyclable waste from countries where this waste would otherwise be landfilled. The landfilling of waste causes very significant greenhouse gas emissions. Although we also avoid those emissions, we do not include them in our CO₂-footprint.
• Landfills: In the past waste was being landfilled. The rotting process of this waste leads to greenhouse gas emissions. Attero captures these landfill gasses as much as possible and turns these gasses into green gas or electricity. A part is not being captured and leads to methane emissions (a greenhouse gas that is being expressed into CO₂-equivalents, CO₂eq).
• Recycling: Attero processes lots of waste into secondary resources. By recycling plastics we avoid more plastics being made from oil. And with the production of high quality fertilizers from biowaste less peat has to be excavated in the Baltic States and being transported to the Netherlands. In the process of turning biowaste into compost Attero also produces renewable biogas in an intermediate step. And by recycling metals from residual waste and from packaging waste these metals do not have to be mined. With all these recycling activities Attero avoids even more CO₂-emissions.

All together Attero emitted 862 kton CO₂in 2019 while avoiding the emission of 939 kton CO₂. Combining these two makes Attero Climate Neutral over 2019: We avoid more emissions than we emit.

1 million tons of avoided CO₂-emissions in 2030

Attero has the ambition to contribute even more to Europe’s Climate Goals. First of all we will do our best to avoid landfilling of waste in Europe by turning it into energy as long as this contributes to saving CO₂-emissions in Europe. Moreover, Attero also has the ambition to avoid the emission of 1 million tons of CO₂ by 2030. We have a number of innovation projects running that can contribute in realizing this ambition:

• Increase the capacity for post-separation of residual waste from household and commercial;
• Increase the capacity of plastics recycling;
• Increase the heat offtake from our EfW plants into heat networks;
• Increase the green gas production from organic waste streams such as biowaste;
• Increase the production of biosubstrate materials from biowaste to replace peat;
• Realize solar parks on landfill sites for the production of renewable electricity;
• CO₂capture at our EfW plant;
• Project Sustainable Landfill (IDS) to reduce landfill gas emissions.

The chance that these projects are being realized greatly depends on government policy. When government policy embraces true reductions of CO2-emissions, than Attero is convinced that a number of the projects above will be realized so we can achieve our 2030 ambition.