Current state of Waste-to-Energy in Denmark >>>

Current U.S. climate policy treats waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities and landfills in fundamentally unequal ways.

This paper explores how carbon capture can be integrated into thermal waste treatment plants with minimal energy losses - or even efficiency gains

Skanderborg-based Bigadan A/Sand Kanadevia Inova AG are extending their collaboration with the ongoing development of more biogas plants in Denmark.

This study investigated the performance of a passive biocover system at a Danish landfill.

18 Member States are at risk of missing one or both of the 2025 targets.

An empirical model was developed and employed to estimate annual methane (CH4) emissions from two Danish landfills (Skellingsted and AV Miljø).

This paper presents the gas collection efficiencies of 23 Danish landfills and suggests how these values could be used to regulate landfill methane emissions in Denmark.

Over the last few years, global energy demand has risen, and this trend is expected to continue. Almost all European Union (EU) countries are suffering from a shortage of energy services. Annually, EU fossil fuel energy production falls; for example, in 2014, gas production fell by 11.2% compared to 2013. Energy imports, especially natural gas, have increased as a result of lower energy output. The EU is still heavily reliant on fossil fuel imports (oil and gas), and the cost of EU energy imports in 2017 increased by 26% (€266 billion).

Hospital and medical wastes are disposed in tens of thousands of dedicated incinerators or are autoclaved to destroy pathogens and then landfilled. However, over a hundred cities which have waste to energy (WTE) power plants fueled by municipal solid waste, use these plants to co-combust medical wastes. This report identified forty one such plants, located in a dozen nations, which in total co-combust about 90,000 tons of medical waste annually. The medical waste represented an average of 2.4% of the total amount of wastes combusted in these WTE power plants. Generally, the medical wastes are collected at the point of origin in puncture resistant, leakproof and sealed containers which are transported to WTE plants and are mechanically conveyed to the WTE furnace.

In his email, Prof. Nickolas J.Themelis highlights Copenhill Waste-to-Energy (WtE) in Denmark as a great example in the the waste management sector in Denmark, which can be taken as an inspiration from the other countries as well.

Recent research from Denmark and Eastern European countries provides new insights into the challenges and opportunities in textile waste management and recycling within the European Union.

This study explores the recyclability of textiles by analysing the anatomy of textiles in Denmark and applies these findings to forecast the material available to different recycling routes in 2025.

This Outlook can help decision-makers understand the direction in which we are heading and help to assess which policies can support a more circular economy. The OECD stands ready to assist governments in making this transition by designing, developing and delivering better resource efficiency policies for better lives.

A report by Ecologic Institute and Climact shows that the draft National Energy and Climate Plans presented by governments at the start of 2019 are in acute need of improvement. They suffer from inadequate targets and insufficient details on the policies and financing needed to move towards net-zero emission economies in Europe. Member States also need to do better in involving their national stakeholders in providing input to the plans, to benefit from their expertise and to get them on board for future policies. Good practice examples exist around the EU to serve as inspiration for the final plans due by the end of the year.

New book on modern WTE technology and some of its applications around the world by Dr. Efstatios Kalogirou, member of the Global WtERT Council and co-founder of WtERT-Greece. It discusses thermal treatment technologies, including combustion, novel gasification, plasma gasification, and pyrolysis. Furthermore it offers 35 real-world international case studies from the Americas, Asia, Europe, as well as Africa and provides different approaches for different geographic areas.

Combustion with energy recovery of post-recycling municipal solid waste (MSW) plays an important role in sustainable waste management worldwide. The main by-product of MSW combustion is the ash discharged at the end of the moving grate, which has significant resource potential, since it mainly consists of ferrous, non-ferrous metals and mineral aggregates.

This Study to assess the implementation by EU Member States of certain provisions of Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste, carried out for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment (DG Environment), investigates the situation in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU) as regards the landfilling of untreated non-hazardous municipal solid waste.

Food waste prevention remains the first priority in the European Waste Framework Directive, which aimed to halve the amount of food wasted within the EU Member States by 2025. Thus, reliable data on food waste composition and quantity are crucial for assessing the current food waste situation and determine potential improvements.

Member States wishing to cultivate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have always been a minority in the EU. Only eight out of twenty-seven have experienced transgenic agriculture. Throughout the years, the opposition to this form of farming has become a genuinely transnational phenomenon given that many regions of different European countries declared themselves GMO-free. Moreover, Member States such as Austria, Luxembourg, Greece, Poland and, most recently, Hungary officially banned transgenic agriculture within their borders altogether. France and Germany suspended the cultivation of GM maize MON 810, respectively in 2008 and 2009. In addition, the EU has previously authorized only two GM crops: GM maize MON 810 (authorization renewed in 2008) and GM potato EH92-527-1 (2010), known as the ‘Amflora potato.’ The cautious approach towards transgenic farming is also witnessed by the long and contested process of renewal of the permit to cultivate GM maize MON 810 and the issue of the authorization for the Amflora potato. All this shows that in the EU there has always been a very limited tolerance for transgenic agriculture.

Greenland is an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which comprises Denmark proper, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. After a guiding referendum in Greenland and approval by the Greenland Parliament, a Danish Act formally established the Greenland Self-Government on 21 June 2009. For most areas of legislation and government, the Act either transferred or provided for the transfer of the legislative power from the Danish Parliament to the Greenland Parliament and of the executive power from the Government of Denmark to the Government of Greenland. The Greenland Self-Government has the legislative and executive powers in many areas, including those of mineral resources (oil, gas and minerals) and of climate matters. This article describes the regulation of mineral resource activities and related climate matters in Greenland. It then discusses the Greenland Self-Government’s competence in relation to negotiation and conclusion of international climate agreements as well as self-governing territories’ general right to do so. Finally, it considers the Greenland Self-Government’s climate and emission mitigation commitments for 2008–2012 and thereafter.

This article offers a survey of the legal and regulatory issues associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in the eight Arctic states. It comprises five parts, offering some introductory notes, a very brief insight into CCS, assessing each jurisdiction in terms of sources and sequestration geology and current or proposed CCS projects, providing an account of relevant rules, and finishing with brief conclusions. Because CCS is a costly technology, and, moreover, can only be implemented where there are large point-source final emitters and favorable storage geology, CCS projects in Arctic states will cluster around a limited number of industrial locations which will include oil and gas production facilities and large mining and mineral processing facilities that also have suitable storage targets close at hand. In addition to suitable emissions sources and geological targets and appropriate economic incentives, proponents of CCS projects and the public also need the assurance of an appropriate legal and regulatory regime. Such regimes have been slow to develop in Arctic states, although adoption of the European Union’s CCS Directive and the need for its transposition in the EU Member States and possibly in the EEA states has arguably created some momentum.

The objective of the project is to demonstrate that both the use of treatment technology and an environmentally correct management scheme of pig manure can contribute to a reduction of GHG emissions and simultaneously improve the farmers’ sustainability. Further authors: S. Pérez-Balibrea, J. López-Carratalá, M.A. Bustamante - Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura, Spain

This article analyzes the Copenhagen Accord, 2009, and the Cancun Agreements, 2010, focusing in particular on the emerging trends and surviving disagreements in the climate negotiations. This article argues that while the Cancun Agreements offer a firm indication of trends in the climate regime, they do not authoritatively settle the fundamental cleavages that exist in the negotiations: the fate of the Kyoto Protocol; the legal form and architecture of the future legal regime; and the nature and extent of differential treatment between developed and developing states. The Cancun Agreements, however, restored faith, after the failure of Copenhagen, in the multilateral process, and the international climate negotiations are set to continue into the foreseeable future. Whether these negotiations will yield anything other than incremental progress, while skilfully skirting the key issues, remains to be seen.

The MSW combusted in the operating 127 WTE plants of France amounts to 16.1 million tons. All of these plants meet the particulate matter, mercury,dioxins, and other emission standards of E.U. and France, with the exception of NOx where the average WTE emission in 2006 was about 25% higher than the E.U. standard of 200 mg NOx/Nm3 of stack gas.

This paper aims to define the meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of the European framework and examine CSR in three different European countries. The main elements which encompass the meaning of CSR focus on activities with social and environmental sensitiveness on a voluntary basis.