Economic and environmental assessment on the energetic valorization of organic material for a municipality in Quebec, Canada

0306-2619/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2009.07.007 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] ( Waste-to-energy provides a solution to two problems: waste management and energy generation. An integrated anaerobic waste valorization process is an interesting option, but because of investments cost and low energy value in the province of Quebec, it is hard for a municipality to commit to that solution. This paper investigated the economic possibilities to manage organic material, organic fraction of municipal solid waste, and municipal wastewater sludge by anaerobic digestion for a 150,000 inhabitant municipality, with consideration to energy generation and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Using the biogas to co-generation solution brings a payback time on investment (PBT) of 3.7 years with electricity price at 0.10 $Cdn/kW h. The addition of manure from surrounding farms increases the biogas production by 37%, but increases the PBT to 6.8 years unless the leftover digestate can be used for agronomic valorization; then it becomes economically advantageous. The natural gas purchasing cost is too low to promote the enrichment of biogas into renewable natural gas. However, this scenario has the lowest energetic payback time (3.3 years) and reduces the most greenhouse gas emissions (4261 tCO2eq/a). 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.