Abstract
Increased emissions of greenhouse gases have altered the global ambient temperature and adversely affected global climatic conditions. The municipal solid waste (MSW) generated by households is considered the third largest anthropogenic source of methane (CH4) emissions, constituting 11% of all global CH4 emissions. The current study derived total MSW CH4 emission estimates using the IPCC default method (DM), modified triangular method (MTM) and first order decay method (FOD). The estimated CH4 emission was higher for the DM than the other methods, and was comparable to estimates from other studies. This study observed that the net annual emission of CH4 from landfills in India increased from 404 Gg in 1999–2000 to 990 Gg and 1084 Gg in 2011 and 2015, respectively. We also found that CH4 emissions were highly correlated (R2 = 0.8) with the gross state domestic product (GSDP) of states and the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, which is an indicator of human well-being. The MSW management policy of India needs to be reviewed in a current policy context, as the management and efficient utilization of MSW technologies might help increase the use of CH4 as an energy source and thereby improve its sustainable and cost-effective management.
Highlights
The increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has altered the global temperature pattern and created a threat against human health and the environment[1,2,3,4,5,6]
Our estimate with the default method (DM), which is 404.86 Gg, used a fraction of degradable organic carbon (DOC) of 0.114 instead of 0.16, the value used by Kumar et al.[9], based on the fractions depicted in the CPCB, 2013
The total CH4 emission value of three landfill sites in Delhi was calculated by Chakraborty et al.[34], for the year 2009 using the DM (45.7 Gg), modified triangular method (MTM) (41.4 Gg) and first order decay method (FOD) (31.1 Gg)[34]
Summary
The increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has altered the global temperature pattern and created a threat against human health and the environment[1,2,3,4,5,6]. Rapid population growth and development activities have increased the potential CH4 emission level, and it has been estimated that the concentration of GHG CH4 is expected to increase from 6.88 Gt CO2-eq, the value recorded in 2010, to 8.59 Gt CO2-eq by 202016. Only 553 compost and vermicompost plants, 56 bio-methanation plants, 22 refuse derived fuel (RDF) plants and 13 waste-to-energy conversion plants are installed in the country (CPCB 2013–14)[24] Many of these schemes have experienced failure due to several issues related to the segregation of waste, low calorific values of the waste, and challenges in the operation and maintenance of the plants (CPCB 2013–14). In India, due to inadequate data availability, a large amount of uncertainty related to MSW management and emissions has been observed, which makes it difficult to estimate the accurate value for the landfill GHG emission potential. The International Panel on Climate Change[29] has established a method for the estimation of GHGs emitted from landfills that has been widely used by researchers[9,27,30,31]
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