Comprehensive evaluation of municipal solid waste power generation and carbon emission potential in Tianjin based on Grey Relation Analysis and Long Short Term Memory

Abstract

With the rapid development of China's economy, the contradiction of the mismatch between municipal solid waste disposal capacity and its growth has become increasingly prominent, and the need to develop alternative energy sources has become increasingly urgent. Municipal solid waste incineration plays an important role in waste management. In this study, the Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) prediction model is constructed to achieve effective prediction of municipal solid waste generation by taking 11 influencing factors of municipal solid waste generation as input indicators in Tianjin. Meanwhile, this study predicts the power generation from municipal solid waste incineration and carbon emissions in Tianjin based on the prediction results. The experimental results show that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) value of the combined GRA-LSTM model established in this study is 6.759 %, and this model outperforms the other five structural methods in terms of prediction performance. By 2025, the amount of MSW in Tianjin will reach 3.74 million metric tons, the power generation through incineration will be 20.02–39.47 GWh, and the CO2 emission through incineration will be about 1.14 million metric tons. Finally, to cope with the growth of municipal solid waste generation and unbalanced power supply structure in the country's mega-cities, this paper puts forward relevant suggestions for achieving sustainable urban development.