Climate Change Impacts of Electricity Generated at a Waste-to-Energy Facility.

Waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities combust both biogenic and nonbiogenic materials comprising municipal solid waste (MSW) in addition to managing waste, leading to a lack of clarity on the life cycle climate change impact (LCCCI) as an electricity generator. In order to investigate the LCCCI of this resource, a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) of a WTE facility in Jamesville, NY, was performed utilizing system expansion to account for avoided landfilling emissions, additional metals recycling, and the loss of potential electricity generation from landfill gas. The LCCCI of electricity from this WTE facility ranges from 0.

Geographic analysis of the feasibility of collocating algal biomass production with wastewater treatment plants.

Resource demand analyses indicate that algal biodiesel production would require unsustainable amounts of freshwater and fertilizer supplies. Alternatively, municipal wastewater effluent can be used, but this restricts production of algae to areas near wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), and to date, there has been no geospatial analysis of the feasibility of collocating large algal ponds with WWTPs. The goals of this analysis were to determine the available areas by land cover type within radial extents (REs) up to 1.