Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis Working toward Zero-Waste and Its Indication to Low Carbon City Development

Ruixi Zhao, Lu Sun, Xiaolong Zou and Yi Dou
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Ruixi Zhao: Business College, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050000, China
Lu Sun: School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Xiaolong Zou: School of International & Public Affairs, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Yi Dou: Presidential Endowed Chair for “Platinum Society”, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-14

Abstract: Low carbon city development and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation in urban communities are urgent. There is great potential to improve the GHG inventory at the community level. Meanwhile, building zero-waste cities and improving waste treatment efficiency have been significant environmental issues due to the rapid increase of waste generation. This research aims to develop a community-scale GHG emission inventory of the waste sector and improve its accuracy and consistency through applying the bottom-up approach. This study covers both direct and indirect emissions categories of the waste sector with the goal of building a zero-waste community. Honjo Waseda community, located in Japan, was used as a case study community. Energy consumption waste treatment sectors were evaluated and calculated through first-hand field data. GHG emission estimation of the waste sector included waste incineration, residential wastewater, and waste transport. The highest emissions originated from Beisiagate supermarket due to the large waste amount produced, and the CO 2 -biomass carbon emissions reached approximately 50% of the total emissions. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis of the implementation of new technologies was also conducted. This study created proposals for GHG emission reduction toward a zero-waste community through the comparison of three cases. Case 1 was business as usual; Case 2 proposed a combination of incineration bio-gasification (MBT); Case 3 introduced a combination of solid recovered fuel (SRF) and a bio-gasification system. SRF contributed the most to emission reduction, and Case 3 exhibited the highest energy recovery. Furthermore, comparing the GHG emissions produced by the use of SRF for power generation and heat supply revealed that using SRF as a heat supply reduced more GHG emissions than using SRF for power generation.

Keywords: greenhouse gas; community-scale; zero-waste; waste treatment; low carbon city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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