This spreadsheet serves as an Input file to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Waste-to-Energy System Simulation (WESyS) model developed in Stella Pro (isee systems, Lebanon, NH). WESyS is a national-level system dynamics model that simulates energy production from three sectors of the U.S. waste-to-energy industry: landfills, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and publically owned treatment works (POTWs).
For our purposes, a scenario is a set of model conditions (i.e. parameter settings) that approximate a specified condition or potential reality. For the landfill diversion scenario outlined here, we examined California Senate Bill 1383, which sets forth a timeline for diversion of organic wastes from landfills. This scenario is only applied to the California landfill (CA LF) and California wastewater treatement plant (CA WWTP) modules. For this scenario, we modified the model to perform a set of calculations that reduce the amount of organic waste (in tons per year) based on the SB 1383 timeframe – 50% by 2020, 75% by 2025 and the total amount of waste and organics that went to California landfills in 2014. We also assumed that all waste diverted from landfills would go to wastewater treatment plants.