The author of a review into waste management practice has accused the Economic and Social Research Institute’s (ESRI) report published today of featuring a number of “factual errors” and “misplaced assumptions”.
“If ESRI were to correct the errors they have made, they would reach similar conclusions to those of our international expert team,” said Dr Dominic Hogg of consultants Eunomia.
The ESRI's report - An Economic Approach to Municipal Waste Management Policy in Ireland - was critical of the Minister for Environment's policy on waste incineration saying it had "no underlying rationale" and is likely to impose "needless costs on the economy".
It also said the report by Eunomia, carried out separately for the Minister, was “severely flawed” in setting its recommended levies for residual waste.
However, Dr Hogg said while it is understandable the ESRI has “very limited experience” in the area of waste management policy and information “factual errors and misplaced assumptions around economics and policy which appear throughout the report” cannot pass without comment.
He said the ESRI assumes wrongly that emissions of carbon dioxide from waste facilities can be ignored because they are already “paid for” through the existence of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
Dr Hogg claimed the ESRI report calculates the environmental costs of air pollution but then ignores them. It does this because, he said, the facilities are regulated under permits and licenses issued by the EPA. As a result, the externalities resulting from the remaining emissions that do occur are zero.
“This line of argument might be expected from an industrial lobby group, but not from ESRI, and no independent environmental economist would subscribe to their view,” Dr Hogg said.
He also said carbon dioxide emissions reported in the study for incineration are too low by a factor of 10 and that the source of data for emissions from MBT is not referring to an MBT facility at all.
He said he would write to the director of the ESRI to request changes be made.
“We suspect that it will then become clear that the differences in the ESRI and Eunomia figures for the proposed levy on incineration would be slight,” Dr Hogg added.
