OIES Podcast – Carbon Capture from the Waste to Energy Sector

In this podcast, David Ledesma speaks to Hasan Muslemani and Mathieu Lucquiaud about their forthcoming research paper on the potential to generate negative emissions from European Waste-to-Energy (WtE) sector using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The authors discuss the role that WtE can play in dealing with residual waste from municipal, commercial and industrial sources, and how CCS can play a role in mitigating respective emissions. Specifically, the authors point out that capturing CO₂ from the biogenic content in waste has the potential to produce ‘negative emissions’ and proceed to describe a methodology for assessing overall negative emissions which can be captured from the waste sector in Europe. In their analysis, the authors rely on a number of criteria that would enable or prohibit the integration of carbon capture technology at the plant level, including proximity to industrial CCS clusters and geological storage sites, and the availability of space for CO₂ capture retrofit around WtE plants. The authors conclude by emphasising the need to deal with untreated waste which is currently being landfilled – potentially through WtE with CCS – if adverse environmental impacts are to be avoided.

By: OIES