Displaying items by tag: Tax

Lithuania: Arturas Zaremba, the head of Akmenes Cementas, has warned that government proposals to increase the import tax on coal in 2024 and the abolition of subsidies for the fuel will affect the company. The country’s parliament is also proposing scaling the import tax based on a CO2 scale, according to the Baltic Business Daily newspaper. Zaremba said that the cement producer uses 130,000t/yr of coal. However, it is currently investing Euro22m on an upgrade to its Akmenes integrated plant to allow it to switch to using a higher proportion of solid-recovered fuel. It currently has a 10% alternative fuels substitution rate using dried sewage sludge and tyres.

Zaremba said "There will be some impact because we will still have some of that coal left, but not as much as we would have had without the investment. I have not followed how much they plan to increase the excise duty, but we need to look into how much that would be in the financial terms. Any increase has an impact."

Denmark: Norway-based Geminor has commissioned a new refuse-derived fuel (RDF) production plant in Aalborg, Jutland. The plant is equipped with a windshifter separator, allowing it to extract up to 70% of plastic in residual waste, in addition to metals and wood. This produces a heavy bio-RDF with low fossil content, of the type previously developed by the company at its HUB research facility in Landskrona, Sweden. Though more expensive to produce than other types of RDF, the company believes the fraction offers higher profitability due to its taxation benefits.

India: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has lobbied the government in its Pre-Budget Memorandum 2020-21 over customs duties. The body is suggesting a reduction on the customs duty on tyre chips for use as alternative fuel (AF) to 5% from 10%. There is currently no import tax on cement and duties of 5% and below on various clinker constituents.

Netherlands: Waste management service N+P has said that it will aim to supply 1.2Mt of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) to UK recipients expected to include cement producers. It will release full details of the contracts in question in early 2020. N+P said that due to import tax it would seek to supply its Netherlands contracts with waste from sources other than the UK.

Netherlands/UK: The RDF Industry Group has criticised a new tax proposal by the Dutch government on waste imports as part of its National Climate Agreement. The government wants to impose a tariff of Euro32/t on imported refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from the start of January 2020. It also wants to add a CO₂ tax of Euro30/t on industrial emitters from the start of 2021. The group says that, whilst it welcomes moves towards reducing CO₂ emissions, it believes the proposed Dutch taxes, in their current form, will be counterproductive in achieving this goal.

“RDF export forms a vital and flexible part of the UK’s waste management system, supporting over 6800 additional jobs in the UK, and saving over 700,000 tonnes CO₂ emissions annually. The Netherlands is the largest importer of UK waste, receiving 1.3Mt of RDF from the UK in 2018, powering good quality, efficient treatment facilities, many of which utilise heat offtake as well as electricity. The introduction of an import tax risks more waste going to landfill in the UK each year, disregarding the waste hierarchy, worsening the environmental impact, increasing costs and putting jobs at risk. Furthermore, given the large proportion of waste to Dutch incinerators that comes from the UK, there is also a risk of plant closures, and job losses in the Netherlands,” said Robert Corijn, chair of the RDF Industry Group.

The RDF Industry Group says it has raised its concerns with Dutch Parliamentary representatives.