Municipal solid waste-to-energy in EU-27 towards a circular economy

Abstract

The current work deals with the energy recovery, through incineration (R1) and biological treatment (R3), from municipal solid waste (MSW), within EU-27 in a Circular Economy approach. The EU legislation is analyzed in reference to the production and management of MSW for energy recovery along with the Waste-to-Energy processes (Incineration, Anaerobic Digestion and Composting, Pyrolysis, Gasification, Plasma technology, and Landfill gas). As reference years, 2015 and 2019 have been considered, which are the corresponding years of the first European plan towards a Circular Economy (COM - (2015) - 614) and the year before COM-(2020)-98. Also, the following data have been collected and elaborated from each Member State for the years 2015 and 2019: the total MSW generated, the total MSW used for energy recovery through incineration and biological treatment, the primary energy production from renewable and nonrenewable MSW, and the gross domestic energy consumption by MSW-generated energy. The main conclusion drawn from this work was the growing trend of the quantities of MSW used for energy recovery in EU-27 and the increasing trend of primary energy production from MSW that EU followed as aggregate. It was observed that for some Member States, energy followed increasing trend, of higher or lower rate, while for other showed descending trend. Despite the overall increasing trend of energy production from MSW, the rate is still relatively low, at least for some countries, and greater effort is required for their compliance with EU policy towards a Circular Economy approach.