Economic Aspects of Food Waste-to-Energy System Deployment

Economic barriers are major considerations for the successful implementation and deployment of food waste-to-energy systems, along with technical, operational, and management aspects. For cities, municipalities, and medium and small food-related businesses in urban and semiurban areas that currently landfill the majority of food scraps and food-related waste, it would require the involvement of multiple stakeholders such as municipal decision makers, haulers, investors, and business managers to overcome challenges on costs, financing, revenue streams, and end-market development for energy and by-products. A project-specific financial feasibility analysis should incorporate a budget of all expenditures, including start-up capital costs and operating expenses, revenues, sources of funds, loan and interest repayments on borrowed capital, and investor income and disbursements. Anaerobic digesters, often suitable for high moisture-content organic wastes, have been commercially successful for food waste-to-energy applications and have potential for wider deployment for municipal and business waste generators. Digester systems codigesting food waste with other organic waste, such as livestock manure or wastewater sludge, are operational in large and medium scales at single-site livestock farms, centralized locations for multiple farms, and wastewater treatment plants or water resource recovery facilities. Systems operating solely on mixed food waste at centralized locations and at large food waste generators are increasing

Balancing act: Government roles in an energy conservation network

Government-led interorganizational alliance networks present a sensible opportunity to overcome many societal challenges through collaborative governance. In particular, few researchers have studied alliance networks in the field of energy conservation in commercial buildings—a sector with unique barriers to greater diffusion of innovative cost-saving strategies. We applied an analytic inductive case-based method and social network analysis to study one particular alliance network: the United States Commercial Building Energy Alliances representing interests from retail, commercial real estate, and healthcare sectors. This alliance network was initiated by the United States Department of Energy, with assistance from several federally funded research laboratories in the United States, to promote the diffusion of knowledge and ultimately encourage greater deployment of energy efficiency and clean energy strategies in commercial buildings. We draw upon interview data from 28 cases of private, non-profit, and governmental organizations and complete network data from the alliance participants. We honed in on eight focal cases of governmental organizations to provide insight on how the four forms of energy and environmental data, information, and knowledge shared within an alliance network address the challenge of a vastly underutilized energy resource, namely conservation. Further, we identify and discuss the public's four roles—Commissioner, Interpreter, Marketer, and User—in providing balance to the diffusion of both private and public goods in a network