Drivers and constraints of waste-to-energy incineration for sustainable municipal solid waste management in developing countries

Implementation of waste-to-energy (WtE) incineration has recently surged in developing countries, but the drivers of this growth and the constraints on WtE project sustainability in local contexts remain incompletely understood. We aimed to identify these drivers and constraints in developing countries using Hanoi Capital, Vietnam, as a case study. Face-to-face interviews and a field survey were employed to investigate stakeholders’ opinions and consolidate WtE-related information to identify drivers. The main drivers were the current limited treatment capability, local opposition to current strategies, introduction of legislative incentives and landfilling restrictions, the Hanoi government’s involvement, the example set by the existing WtE plant in Can Tho, increasing waste generation with increasing land scarcity, competitive tipping fees, and introduction of a public–private-partnership model. Some of these identified drivers eliminated historical Vietnamese WtE barriers. Constraints were determined by evaluating the interview results and local data from the field survey. These constraints had legal aspects (e.g., overlapping agency responsibilities), as well as financial (e.g., low tipping fees), technical/technological (e.g., unsorted waste), environmental (e.g., lack of stringent flue gas controls), and social (public opposition to plants) aspects. The evidence presented here could help secure waste treatment capacity through sustainable WtE incineration in other fast-growing cities.