Exploratory Study of Profitable Combinations of Electricity and Materials from Urban Biowaste

Electricity can be generated by renewable resources, such and wind and solar radiation, but also from biomass. To avoid competition with food and feed, waste biomass can be used. An additional advantage of waste biomass is that it contributes both to the circular and biobased economy, in which biomass is converted to food/feed, biomaterials, biochemicals or bioenergy. Thus, the waste biomass used to generate electricity can also be used to make chemicals, materials or fuels. Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands, has the ambition to become a leader in the circular economy and it has also set targets related to the reuse and recycling of waste. According to previous research, using data from Amsterdam (i.e. waste streams, energy demand, potential wind and solar energy production based on local, hourly weather data from 1994-2014) and a gasification-based energy system model with demand and supply constraints, the electricity demand of Amsterdam households can be met in the next decades. Another study determined the most profitable, in terms of net present value (NPV), combination of chemicals and materials that could be produced from this waste biomass stream. In this research, these studies are combined to determine the most profitable combination of electricity, materials, chemicals and fuels from waste biomass in Amsterdam. In all three scenarios (worst, base and best case), nearly the full capacity of electricity from wind was used and about 20% of the available area was covered with solar panels. Furthermore, it was projected that wood and organic municipal solid waste are gasified from 2020 to 2029 and are processed in biorefineries from 2031 to 2050, while grass is refined from 2020 to 2050, although no grass is refined in 2030 in the worst and base case scenarios. Results from a sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the model.