Environmental assessment of amending the Amager Bakke incineration plant in Copenhagen with carbon capture and storage

Abstract

Amending municipal solid waste incineration with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a new approach that can reduce the climate change impacts of waste incineration. This study provides a detailed analysis of the consequences of amending the new Amager Bakke incinerator in Copenhagen (capacity: 600,000 tonnes waste per year) with CCS as a post-combustion technology. Emphasis is on the changes in the energy flows and outputs as well as the environmental performance of the plant; the latter is assessed by life cycle assessment. Amending Amager Bakke with CCS of the chosen configuration reduces the electricity output by 50% due to steam use by the capture unit, but introducing post-capture flue gas condensation increases the heat output utilized in the Copenhagen district heating system by 20%. Thus, the overall net energy efficiency is not affected. The CCS amendment reduces the fossil CO2 emissions to 40 kg CO2 per tonne of incinerated waste and stores 530 kg biogenic CO2 per tonne of incinerated waste. Potential developments in the composition of the residual waste incinerated or in the energy systems that Amager Bakke interacts with, do not question the benefits of the CCS amendment. In terms of climate change impacts, considering different waste composition and energy system scenarios, introducing CCS reduces in average the impact of Amager Bakke by 850 kg CO2-equivalents per tonne of incinerated waste. CCS increases the environmental impacts in other categories, but not in the same order of magnitude as the savings introduced within climate change.

Environmental impact of pioneering carbon capture, transport and storage chains

“…LCA is a standardized method (see ISO 14040 & 14044 [8], [9]) and has been used multiple times in the literature to assess CCTS chains. The reduction potential has been shown for CCTS chains where CO2 is transported via pipelines and captured from flue gases of fossil fuel and wood combustion [10], waste incineration [11], as well as from geothermal fluids of geothermal power plants [12]. Similarly, it is shown that capturing CO2 from clinker production can improve the climate impact of cement if pipeline transport of CO2 is in place [10].…”

The Environmental Performance of Mixed Plastic Waste Gasification with Carbon Capture and Storage to Produce Hydrogen in the U.K.

“…At the Klemetsrud WtE facility in Norway, following a successful pilot project to capture 90% of direct CO 2 process emissions, development of a full-scale MEA based carbon capture of 400,000 tCO 2 /yr is underway . Amager Bakke WtE in Copenhagen, Denmark, has also established a pilot plant …”

Copenhagen’s Struggle to Become the World’s First Carbon Neutral Capital: How Corporatist Power Beats Sustainability

“…Carbon in waste can be almost completely combusted into CO 2 , resulting in one tonne of CO 2 emissions per tonne of incinerated waste, making waste reduction and recycling effective methods of curbing carbon emissions. There are differences in the composition of waste, however, and it has been shown that the fossil carbon content emitted from sorted Danish waste can be as low as one-third (Bisinella et al, 2021). On the other hand, imported waste has "a significantly higher fossil share" because it contains more plastic (Danish Energy Agency, 2021, p. 8; see also Capion & Sørensen, 2021, p. 5).…”

“…The purpose of Copenhagen's planned decarbonisation efforts, including the construction of the new waste-handling facility (Copenhill), was to avoid annual emissions of CO 2 increasing to 100,000 tonnes by 2025. Instead, new projections indicate that CO 2 emissions from Copenhill will reach 560,000 tonnes CO 2 per year by 2025 (ARC, 2021;Bisinella et al, 2021). In other words, the realised Copenhill project alone will exceed the total projected worst-case CO 2 output from waste incineration by a factor of 5.6.…”