The potential of waste-to-energy in reducing GHG emissions

Background: The combustion of municipal solid waste (MSW) to generate heat or electricity (waste-to-energy [WTE]) could reduce net GHG emissions in the USA compared with combusting methane from landfills. Moreover, negative CO2 emissions could be achieved with CCS because 66% of the carbon in MSW is typically biogenic. Results and conclusion: For the five largest landfill sites in each state, we estimate that at least 58 and 11 sites have enough MSW to fuel WTE plants of >50 MWe and >100 MWe, respectively. Furthermore, half of these sites lie within 20 km of potential underground saline and other CO2 storage reservoirs. We estimate that the levelized electricity cost for WTE without CO2 capture is US$94/MWh and is $285/MWh with amine-based post-combustion capture technology. The cost of CO2 capture is $58/Mg CO2, resulting in a cost for carbon negative emissions of $93/Mg CO2; substantially lower than for some geoengineering methods, including capturing CO2 from air.