Waste-to-Energy vs. Landfill Financial Model for a 40-Year Municipal Lifecycle

A seven-sheet Microsoft Excel workbook implements a 40-year lifecycle cost comparison between a Waste-to-Energy combined heat and power facility and a landfill-only strategy. The model, created by Adam Nutt and submitted to Energy Policy, uses parameters for a mid-sized U.S. municipality generating 300,000 to 350,000 tons of waste annually. It is intended to support replication of quantitative results from the associated paper and provide a reusable template for municipal WtE feasibility evaluation.

Use Cases

• Compare net present value and internal rate of return for waste-to-energy versus landfill strategies based on the financial model.
• Assess the impact of the Investment Tax Credit on project economics using the dedicated 'WtE Cash Flows' and 'WtE Cash Flows No ITC' sheets.
• Calculate Levelized Cost of Carbon Mitigation and Levelized Cost of Waste Diversion based on the 'Advanced Metrics' sheet.
• Perform sensitivity analysis on key financial and operational parameters using the 'Sensitivity Analysis' sheet results.
• Incorporate social costs of carbon into municipal waste strategy planning using the 'Societal Lifecycle Cost Analysis' sheet.

Strengths

• Model covers a 40-year lifecycle analysis, providing long-term projections.
• Includes three distinct scenarios (Conservative, Base, Optimistic) for input parameters.
• Contains dedicated sheets for sensitivity analysis on eleven key parameters.
• All formula logic is preserved in the native Excel format for transparency.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The model is specific to a U.S. municipal context generating 300k-350k tons of waste annually, limiting generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Adam Nutt, Harvard Dataverse

Collection Method

Financial model constructed as a Microsoft Excel workbook for academic research.

Time Range

40-year projection period.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-16 20:42:46; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Parameters are representative of a mid-sized U.S. municipality.