Climate protection is one of the most important challenges to today's environmental policy agenda. Among the different economic and social sectors which have to contribute to minimising emissions of greenhouse gases is the waste management. European and German waste policy has contributed to significantly reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases due to waste treatment. For example the land-filling of solid municipal waste has been sharply limited by law. However, there still remains a huge potential for improvement in the methods of waste treatment to reduce emissions. In order to concretely identify this potential, the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) organised a workshop entitled "From Waste to Energy - An Important Contribution to Climate Protection" on 6-7 November 2006.

The focus of the workshop lay on formulating suitable legal and political conditions with which energy recovery from waste can be optimised. The workshop did not, by contrast, focus on the purely technical aspects of raising energy efficiency, e.g. in waste incineration plants. The workshop programme included a plenary session and two working groups: The plenary session on the first day laid the scientific ground for the more detailed debates in the working groups. The plenary session elaborated on the following subjects: I. Relevant Developments in Waste Policy as well as state of Research and Development; II. Best Practice Cases of Climate Friendly Waste Management in Europe. The two working groups dealt with the following subjects:

• WG 1: Measures to foster energy recovery in waste incineration plants;
• WG 2: Potential of Biomass in Waste  – Options for energy recovery illustrated by specific waste streams.

The workshop proceedings include a summary (pdf, 125 KB, German).