Use of MRF residue as alternative fuel in cement production.

Single-stream recycling has helped divert millions of metric tons of waste from landfills in the U.S., where recycling rates for municipal solid waste are currently over 30%.

An integrated analytical framework for quantifying the LCOE of waste-to-energy facilities for a range of greenhouse gas emissions policy and technical factors.

This study presents a novel integrated method for considering the economics of waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities with priced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based upon technical and economic characteristics of the WTE facility, MSW stream, landfill alternative, and GHG emissions policy. The study demonstrates use of the formulation for six different policy scenarios and explores sensitivity of the results to ranges of certain technical parameters as found in existing literature. The study shows that details of the GHG emissions regulations have large impact on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of WTE and that GHG regulations can either increase or decrease the LCOE of WTE depending on policy choices regarding biogenic fractions from combusted waste and emissions from landfills.