Investing in infrastructure to build a sustainable society

Explore Equitix’s Energy from Waste Portfolio: A Pillar of the UK’s drive for Sustainable Investment Goals

Equitix’s mission is to invest in critical infrastructure that delivers essential services to society and generates long-term, sustainable value.

Our Environmental Services sector comprises £1.7bn of waste treatment and energy recovery facilities. These investments provide essential services to their local communities. Energy from Waste (EfW) is a vital part of that mission.

Our EfW assets treat approximately 35% of the UK’s residual waste, making Equitix one of the UK’s largest investors in the sector. In addition, we invest in EfW infrastructure across Europe as we scale our presence to repeat our UK success story.

“We are continually moving to an ever-circular economy, helping us to maintain long-term resilience”

EfW provides a critical, safe and environmentally responsible solution for the treatment of waste, whilst also providing the opportunity to generate energy in the form of electricity and heat. With more than 500 MW of installed electricity generation capacity and 130 MW of heat generation capacity, our portfolio plays a key role in diverting waste from landfill, reducing harmful emissions, and contributing to a circular economy.

“EfW infrastructure is an attractive core infrastructure investment opportunity for Equitix. Our EfW portfolio not only ensures that our communities’ waste arisings are managed responsibly and safely (reducing landfill reliance in the process), but also recovers energy in the process, feeding the national grid or local customers. As a result, we are continually moving to an ever-circular economy, helping us to maintain long-term resilience.”– Paul Ireland, Head of Environmental Services, Equitix

Energy from Waste: A Critical Environmental Service

Energy from Waste (EfW) is first and foremost about the safe management of residual waste. In a society like the UK, which is projected to continue producing residual waste, EfW ensures that this material is managed in a controlled and efficient way. Sending waste to landfill creates long-term environmental liabilities – from methane emissions to groundwater contamination. Our EfW assets eliminate those risks by safely processing waste and recovering value through energy, heat, and materials.

Viridor Energy: Setting the Standard in Safe Waste Treatment

“Community engagement is critical to helping everyone understand what happens to the waste we all generate”

Our investment in Viridor Energy is a cornerstone of our environmental services strategy. Viridor operates the UK’s largest and most geographically diverse EfW portfolio, treating over 3.5 million tonnes of residual waste annually across 11 facilities. These plants collectively generate over 250 MW of electricity, providing baseload power (the continuous, minimum level of electricity supply needed to meet the constant demand on the electrical grid) while significantly reducing the environmental impact of untreated waste. Edita Adamcikova, ESD Director at Viridor refers to Viridor’s waste management model helping to reduce environmental impact while supporting a circular economy with three points of focus:

1. 1. The alternative to energy from waste is landfill. Not only does landfill create higher GHG emissions compared to EfW, but it also creates a legacy that needs to be managed – from leachate and fugitive CH4 emissions. EfW creates no such legacy.
   2. EfW is the only route to achieve Net Zero GHG CO₂ emissions through the application of CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage). Viridor is actively developing CCS on its largest asset that will reduce our scope 1 and 2 net emissions by over a third.
   3. The metals and ash recycled from the plant equate to c. 20% circularity. Extracting valuable materials avoids the need for new extraction of metal ore and aggregates.

“Delivery of net zero is particularly challenging due to the limited number of methods available to reduce emissions. Plastics reduction in the waste stream and carbon capture are the only ways to reach net zero and complete plastics removal is impossible to achieve. However, CCS on EfW is uniquely attractive – it delivers both fossil and biogenic carbon capture, baseload power CO₂ supply and repeatable plant design all of which should lead to significant cost efficiencies to drive down the cost of CCS and open up export markets for domestic CO₂ storage.”

Edita also added: “Community engagement is critical to helping everyone understand what happens to the waste we all generate. Enabling people to understand the quality of processes we run, the efforts we go to, to ensure the pollutants in waste are captured and treated and the way we extract all the use we can from waste, be it in recycling the ash, the pollution control residues or extracting energy from what we all throw away is vital.”

“Viridor represents an ideal investment opportunity—combining critical infrastructure with clear sustainability benefits. We are proud to partner with a business that not only delivers strong operational performance but is also setting the standard for responsible waste treatment.”
– Aisha Hamid, Investment Director, Equitix

Viridor’s infrastructure goes beyond energy recovery. The plants are designed to recover and recycle materials—including metals and ash. Viridor is also a pioneer in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), with active development of a major CCS facility at its Runcorn plant. Once operational, the project could capture up to 900,000 tonnes of CO₂e per year, making it one of the most advanced of its kind.

BioCapital: Harnessing the Value in Organic Waste

Complementing our thermal EfW investments, we have fully acquired BioCapital, a leading anaerobic digestion (AD) platform in the UK. BioCapital processes over 500,000 tonnes of food waste each year, diverting the waste from landfill and converting it into biomethane, renewable electricity, and organic fertiliser.

“Anaerobic digestion is a vital part of the UK’s net zero strategy. Through BioCapital, we are transforming organic waste into clean energy, avoiding methane emissions, and displacing fossil fuels. It’s a win for the environment and a win for energy resilience.”
– Joe Robinson, Head of ESG, Equitix

Food waste presents one of the highest environmental risks when sent to landfill due to its methane output—a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than CO₂. BioCapital’s activities prevent an estimated 300,000 tonnes of methane CO₂e emissions annually by safely processing organic waste into clean energy and useful byproducts.

As mandatory food waste collection policies are rolled out across England from 2026, BioCapital is well-positioned to scale and support local authorities in meeting these obligations in a sustainable way.

Eskilstuna: Circular Innovation in Sweden

“Sweden is at the forefront of biogas and circular economy policy. Our investment in Eskilstuna demonstrates how we’re bringing high-quality infrastructure to support national priorities, while delivering predictable, long-term value to our investors.”

Equitix is also investing in next-generation waste infrastructure across Europe, following on from our UK successes.

Our Eskilstuna Bio-LNG plant in Sweden is designed to process 150,000 tonnes of food and agricultural waste annually, producing around 71 GWh of Bio-LNG—a renewable alternative to fossil-based gas.

Sweden has clearly identified biogas as a key enabler of its net zero by 2045 target and national energy security. The Eskilstuna facility reflects this policy direction while aligning with our ambition to invest in solutions that support decarbonisation and waste circularity internationally.

Delivering Environmental Impact and Operational Resilience

Our investment approach is grounded in long-term, inflation-linked contracts, often with local authorities. These arrangements ensure service reliability for communities, and predictable, risk-adjusted returns for our investors.

But in addition to the inherent risk-protection provided by our deal structuring, the strong sustainability profile of the sector sees it well-positioned to help deliver key Europe-wide initiatives. Consequently, various pathways to increasing investor returns are available, either via optimisations or capital growth.  Our portfolio is well positioned to support the drive to net zero; energy decarbonisation; energy security; district heating; hydrogen production; carbon capture and more.

Across our portfolio, our environmental services assets are delivering measurable benefits:

• Landfill avoidance: Millions of tonnes of residual and food waste diverted from landfill
• Emission reductions: Avoiding significant methane and CO₂ emissions through AD, EfW and the development of CCS solutions
• Circularity: Recovery of metals, ash, and digestate to reduce reliance on virgin materials
• Energy recovery: Stable, local baseload power and heat generation from residual waste

Looking Ahead: Scaling Impact Through Innovation and Collaboration

As demand grows for sustainable waste treatment, we are scaling our platform and optimising our assets. Some of the most interesting opportunities are developing in:

• Deploying carbon capture storage across EfW assets
• Developing private wire energy supply for local industry
• Integrating with adjacent technologies such as green hydrogen and plastics recovery
• Creating circular energy hubs that combine multiple forms of environmental infrastructure

We are proud to be playing a leading role in this critical area of infrastructure. Waste will undoubtedly be a byproduct of a functioning society for many years ahead – and how we manage it will define our future.

At Equitix, we’re committed to ensuring that the future is sustainable, resilient, and responsible.

Creating a lasting legacy for generations

Want to find out more? Contact us: IR@equitix.com

_{Source: report commissioned by Viridor highlighting the potential for EfW to contribute 27% of UK’s greenhouse gas removals (GGR) target: https://www.erm.com/globalassets/insights/efw-with-ccs-a-key-pillar-for-net-zero-in-the-uk-151124.pdf.}