EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Sustainable waste management and waste to energy: Valuation of energy potential of MSW in the Greater Bay Area of China

Ziqiao Zhou and Lin Zhang

Energy Policy, 2022, vol. 163, issue C

Abstract: The increasing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) is not only a challenge to our society, but also an opportunity for regional sustainable development. In this paper, we estimate the energy potential of waste through two different waste disposal methods, landfills and incineration, by the years 2030 and 2060, using the Greater Bay Area of China as an example. Also, we estimate the carbon dioxide emission reductions by energy recovery through the two disposal methods. In this paper, a waste generation model and the IPCC default method are used. Our results show that the maximum potential of electricity production from MSW for the GBA could reach 31,346 GWh by 2030 and 77,748 GWh by 2060. Based on these results, we discuss the differences in energy generation efficiency among cities and offer advice to policy makers to mitigate the gap. We suggest that incineration is preferrable compared to landfill from both aspects of energy recovery and climate concern. Furthermore, municipal governments should accelerate waste classification to increase the heating value of MSW in order to increase efficiency.

Keywords: Waste to energy; Sustainable waste management; Greater bay area of China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522000829
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:163:y:2022:i:c:s0301421522000829

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112857

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:163:y:2022:i:c:s0301421522000829