Facilities for incinerating residual waste (waste-to-energy facilities) are an important component in waste management, and they reduce the load on the energy system by producing heat and/or electricity. However, waste incineration also produces CO2 emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can enable emissions reductions from waste-to-energy facilities, thus reducing the waste sector’s climate footprint. Additionally, emissions from waste-to-energy facilities include a considerable proportion of CO2 from biological sources. Capturing and storing these emissions can produce negative emissions.
CaptureY convenes actors from the waste sector to develop new knowledge about opportunities and barriers for realising CCS in waste-to-energy and what this means for adjacent systems (e.g., district heating, energy). The project also seeks to understand CCS in light of the waste sector’s ongoing transition towards a circular economy.
CaptureY focuses on Norway but will also carry out research in Sweden and the United Kingdom, as to enable comparative analyses. We combine socio-technical perspectives on green innovation and sustainable transitions with techno-economic modelling of prerequisites for and effects of CCS implementation in waste-to-energy. As a whole, CaptureY will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the sector-specific and context-dependent conditions which influence the realisation of CCS as a measure for climate change mitigation in the waste sector.