This paper provides an overview of waste generation and treatment operations in the European Union (EU) and other European countries and an analysis of the possibilities for the use of municipal solid waste (MSW) for energy production. A geographic information system based methodology was developed to investigate the spatial distribution of MSW and to identify the optimal location for new potential waste-to-energy in Europe. In 2016, there were 512 plants in Europe, with 251 combined heat and power plants, 161 electricity-only and 94 heat-only plants, which provide a total incineration capacity of 93 million tonnes. The suitability analysis showed that there is a potential to implement around 248 new waste to energy plants in the EU and 330 in all Europe, with a total capacity of 37 and 50 million tonnes, respectively. This represents an additional primary energy production of 260 PJ (6.2 Mtoe) in the EU, in comparison to 406 PJ (9.7 Mtoe) already produced in 2015, and about 352 PJ (8.4 Mtoe) in all European countries considered in this analysis.

The present work provides an analysis of the potential impact of fossil-based Low Carbon Aviation Fuels (LCAF) for the European aviation sector, with a time horizon to 2050. LCAF are a crude-derived alternative to kerosene, offering some Green House Gas (GHG) savings, and have been defined by ICAO as eligible fuels for mitigating the environmental impact of aviation. A methodological framework to evaluate the EU technical potential for LCAF production is developed, based on data on crude utilization for jet fuel production in EU refineries, relevant carbon intensity reduction technologies, market prices, and aviation fuel volumes. Two different baselines for fossil-derived kerosene carbon intensity (CI) are considered: a global figure of 89 g_CO2e/MJ and an EU-27-specific one of 93.1 g_CO2eq/MJ. Three scenarios considering increasing levels of CI reduction are then defined, taking into account the current and potential commercial availability of some of the most relevant carbon intensity reduction technologies. The analysis demonstrates that, even if LCAF could offer GHG saving opportunities, their possible impact, especially when compared to the ambition level set in the most recent European legislative proposals, is very limited in most of the analysed scenarios, with the exception of the most ambitious ones. At 2030, a non-zero technical potential is projected only in the higher CI reduction scenario, ranging between 1.8% and 14.2% of LCAF market share in the EU-27 (equal to 0.6 to 4.75 Mtoe), depending on the considered Baseline for CI. At 2050, almost all considered scenarios project a larger technical potential, ranging between 6.9% and 22.2% for the global Baseline (2.21 to 7.13 Mtoe), and between 1.8% and 16.2% for the EU-27 Baseline (0.58 to 5.2 Mtoe). LCAF additional costs to current production costs are also discussed, given their relevance in large-scale deployment of these technologies, and are projected to range between 39 and 46.8 USD/toe.

The extensive use of plastics and the environmental burden associated with their disposal have attracted the attention of scientists, politicians and citizens in Europe. In this frame, the EU has adopted a European Strategy for Plastics aiming, on the one hand, at reducing the use of plastic and, on the other hand, promoting their reuse in the context of a circular economy directly linked with the recently adopted Bioeconomy Strategy. Bioplastics could be an alternative to the conventional plastics, but they still have a limited share in the market. In this paper, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), a soft computing technique for analysing complex decision-making problems, is applied to identify the factors acting as drivers or barriers towards a bio-based plastics industry, their relative importance and the interactions between them. Experts with diverse backgrounds (technical experts, policy makers, industry executives) were interviewed in order to capture their perceptions and create a collective FCM capturing the strong and the weak points of the system. The collective FCM has a total number of 38 factors, which reflect the different approaches and knowledge of the experts. Overall, the “bio-based plastics” system is influenced mainly by the following factors: “EU Legislation”, “Monomers purity”, “Properties of the product”, “Recycling potential”, “Research & Development”, “National Legislation” and “Production cost”. The effect of the most significant political, social and techno-economic factors on the potential growth of the bioplastics sector has also been examined via simulations. The analysis demonstrated that the model is affected more (is more sensitive) to shifts in technoeconomic factors.

Curbing aviation emissions is clear goal for the aviation sector, but it is a challenging task. At international level, the ICAO CORSIA initiative promotes the use of alternative fuels as a means to decarbonise flights. Among alternative fuels, lower carbon aviation fuels (LCAF) have been proposed under CORSIA. LCAF refers to a fossil fuel, which have been produced in a way that results in at least 10% lower lifecycle GHG emissions compared to a benchmark value. This paper analyses potential LCAF solutions for reducing GHG emissions of kerosene production and evaluates them relative to the ICAO baseline of 89.0 gCO_2eq/MJ of fuel. The study analyses the levers that can reduce GHG upstream emissions (emissions from crude oil production) and refining emissions as well. This study shows that no one lever can reduce emissions to a sufficient level to meet the requirement of being a CORSIA-eligible fuel, and therefore that the deployment of multiple levers needed. Since jet fuel comprises only around 10% of total refining output, the LCAF measures could support the implementation of large, high-abatement cost changes, such as refinery-wide carbon capture and storage that affects multiple fuels.