Waste Emissions //
Creating a real carbon pump Diverting organics from landfill can stop the flow of CO2-e into the atmosphere.
By Mike Ritchie THE COP26 climate change summit was recently held in Glasgow. The reason we needed the summit was that we have been efficient at pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but singularly useless at getting it back out again. Australia releases more than 580MT per year of carbon dioxide equivalent into the global atmosphere. Up to 2.7 per cent of these greenhouse gas emissions are contributed by the waste sector. Guess how much we pull out of the atmosphere per year? Zero. Yes, 0 tonnes. Australia’s waste sector can play a key role towards reaching net zero. With maximum diversion to resource recovery, recycling and energy from waste (for the non-recyclable 32
stream), 50MT/year of CO2-e can be abated through four simple and relatively cheap measures: 1. Divert organics from landfill: 18MT CO2-e can be abated through diverting organics away from landfill including paper, cardboard, garden organics, food waste, wood and timber. 2. Capture landfill gas: 11MT CO2-e can be avoided through capturing landfill gas, which can be used for electricity generation or simply flared. 3. Increased recycling: 17MT CO2-e can be avoided through recycling of high embodied energy materials like metals, paper, cardboard, glass, and plastics (i.e. avoiding the emissions associated with the extraction and processing of raw resources).
INSIDEWASTE DECEMBER/JANUARY 2022
4. Energy from Waste: 4MT CO2-e can be abated through the production of energy from solid waste-derived fuels. All of the focus of emissions policy is getting to net zero emissions by 2050. That is, reducing the 580MT of Australian emissions (and all global emissions) to net zero. Hence the push to run all energy consuming activities from electricity or hydrogen, and to produce these via renewable wind and solar. Put simply, put everything we do on the electricity grid or on the hydrogen gas grid (not yet in place) and then supply those two energy systems via renewable sources such as wind and solar. What a task. But the key point is that even net zero by 2050 is not enough to prevent global warming.
Globally, we have already put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise temperatures by 1.5˚C. In the time it takes us to get to net zero (and let’s be positive and assume that is 2050) we will have put another 660 GT into the global atmosphere. The IPCC estimates that emissions to 2050 will drive temperatures further to 1.7˚C. However, the task is even bigger than getting to net zero. To get temperature back down to pre-industrial levels we need to go even harder. We need to have negative emissions. That is, we need to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. The bad news is that no one has yet built a machine to efficiently suck gaseous CO2 from the atmosphere. There are some pilot plants trying but they are just that, pilots. Small-
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