https://www.airport-technology.com/features/waste-jet-fuel-using-garbage-power-planes/ This is an emerging new industry that is very exciting because it can help with two problems at once. Turns out that I may be doing [Engineering] one of these plants; not this company but another one getting in the business of making fuel from garbage.
In principle this reduces carbon emissions by 50%. The garbage would have released its carbon as it decomposed. The jets would have burned traditional fuel and released carbon in addition to the the carbon from decomposition. But now the carbon due to decomposition is in effect captured and instead released when jets burn the fuel made from garbage. The carbon from traditional jet fuel is not released. Energy is required to convert the garbage to fuel. So the net reduction in carbon emissions is something less than 50%. How much less is the real question. How efficiently can this be done? If its profitable then it must be reasonably efficient. Money and energy are somewhat interchangeable in this sense. So if companies are able to make profit doing this, then the environment should benefit proportionately. The biggest thing I see is that it makes garbage a resource and gives it value. If we can make garbage a valuable commodity, the waste problem will take care of itself through market forces. In a sense, garbage is one of our greatest resources. We have enough stored waste to mine it for decades to come. Every year, the United States generates approximately 230 million tons of "trash". So we can imagine that there is a reserve of at least 2.3 billion tons of trash less than ten years old. 230 million tons is added every year.
There is progress in sequestering garbage such that carbon emissions are significantly reduced with residual emissions being captured and used. That includes methane, which is far worse than CO2 in terms of climate change. I'm ALL in favor of using any carbon that fails to stay sequestered, of course. If it's going to get out, we should use it. But, I'm not totally convinced that the most carbon conservative approach is to dig up sequestered carbon in garbage and emit it from airplanes. One of the cool things about garbage is that the carbon is already back to solid form where it's more susceptible to being removed from the environment.
It isn't. It emits as the garbage rots. And I don't buy your first statement at all. No one is sequestering carbon from garbage; at least not beyond some small experiment. Who would pay for it? Simple economics rules that out.
There are a growing number of places that are capping garbage dumps for several reasons - one being the prevention of that carbon making its way back into our atmosphere. That IS sequestration. https://erefdn.org/carbon-sequestration-in-landfills-documentation-from-field-samples/ When we have garbage, it's already a significant step toward sequestration, as it is in solid form. That's one of the biggest hurdles in sequestration - as you can't sequester gas. I'd rather see that sequestration completed than have it funneled back into our atmosphere.
