Integrating Waste-to-Energy Systems with Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) for Sustainable Resource Recovery and Emission Reduction: A Critical Review of Challenges and Opportunities

As the global push to address climate change intensifies, Waste-to-Energy (WtE) plants have evolved into dual-purpose solutions, addressing both municipal solid waste (MSW) management and energy recovery simultaneously. Traditional WtE activities, however, are significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, largely due to fossil-based waste fractions. Integrating Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technologies into WtE plants presents a breakthrough path for emission abatement, advancing circular economy strategies, and even achieving carbon-negative operations. This paper reviews the technological, environmental, and economic facets of WtE-CCUS integration critically. It covers cutting-edge carbon capture techniques—post-combustion, oxy-fuel, and pre-combustion strategies—and considers innovations in solvents, membranes, and solid sorbents for application to heterogeneous waste stream complexity. CO₂ utilization pathways are considered within the paradigm of sustainable resource recovery, e.g., conversion into fuels, chemicals, and construction materials. Where re-use is unfeasible, storage infrastructure and site considerations are reviewed. Large-scale deployment of CCUS in Waste-to-Energy infrastructure is hampered by several major obstacles, including capital and operating costs ranging from $50 to $150 per ton of CO₂, difficult retrofit requirements, technical difficulties brought on by the heterogeneity of urban waste, and policy-related obstacles such as inconsistent environmental policies, unclear carbon pricing, a lack of tax credits, and inconsistent regulations for negative emissions and lifecycle assessment. These difficulties highlight the necessity of unified market incentives and regulatory policies that support the adoption of scalable WtE-CCUS. Through international case studies and techno-economic analyses, this review distills the key opportunities, operational challenges, and policy deficiencies influencing the scalability of WtE-CCUS systems. Findings indicate that while technological feasibility is on the rise, economic and regulatory frameworks are significant barriers. With facilitating policy instruments and market incentives, WtE-CCUS can become a cornerstone of integrated climate and waste management policies.