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The waste management sector significantly contributes to emissions of ambient air pollutants and greenhouse gases, especially in sanitary landfills. In this regard, Taiwan is moving toward a circular economy society via resource recycling and waste-to-power (WTP) in the waste management. In the past decade, the recycling rate of general waste (including recyclable waste, kitchen waste, and bulk waste) increased from 40.97% in 2008 to 60.22% in 2017. On the other hand, 24 large-scale waste incineration plants gained about 2.5 TW-h of net electricity generation, based on 6.25 million metric tons of waste incinerated in 2017. The objectives of this paper are to update the status of waste generation and its WTP in Taiwan. Based on these updated data, the preliminary benefit analysis of WTP showed annual benefits of equivalent electricity charge of around $US 3.3 × 108 (using the feed-in-tariff rate 3.8945 NTD$/kW-h; 1 $US ≈ 30 NTD$) and equivalent CO2 mitigation of about 1.4 million metric tons (using the electricity emissions factor 0.55 kg CO2 equivalent/kW-h). In order to gain environmental, energy, and economic benefits, the regulatory and technological measures for promoting WTP are briefly summarized to create another low-carbon society in Taiwan.

In response to the lack of locally natural sources and the environmental concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, using a wide variety of biomass residues as energy sources has attracted much attention in the past two decades. The purpose of the case study was to examine the energy use of imported palm kernel shell (PKS) in Taiwan, which has generated superheated steam for the end users in the industrial sector. In this work, characterizing the thermochemical properties of imported PKS (including proximate analysis, elemental analysis and calorific value) was first conducted by the standard test methods. Based on the statistics of imported PKS and the method developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the preliminary benefit analysis of PKS-to-energy was further addressed in the paper to verify its equivalent GHG emission mitigation. The results showed the annual benefit of equivalent GHG mitigation of about 78,647 metric tons (using annual imported PKS of 60,000 metric tons on an average). In addition, the economic benefit for purchasing PKS in the industrial boilers can gain the cost-down at approximately NT$60,000,000 (US$2,000,000) in comparison with that of fuel oil. Furthermore, the regulatory measures for upgrading PKS-to-energy and countermeasures for controlling air pollutant emissions from PKS-to-energy facilities were briefly summarized to create another circular economy. Finally, some technological recommendations have been addressed to upgrade the added values of imported PKS in Taiwan.