Including Agricultural and Organic Waste in Food-Water-Energy-Waste Nexus Modelling and Decision-Making

Abstract The Food-Energy-Water-Waste Nexus (FEWWN) represents the interconnections between food, energy, water, and waste production systems and has become a key research area in recent years. Enormous quantities of agricultural and organic wastes are produced throughout the FEWWN, representing a hurdle to sustainability. Often, these wastes are not treated appropriately because their true costs are not only rarely quantified, but they are also usually externalised to the surrounding communities and environments. In this work, we address this shortcoming from a systems perspective fused with approaches from ecological economics and ecosystem service valuation. We construct a bioenergy production framework where the bioenergy may be produced from ethanol and/or agricultural and organic wastes. If waste is converted, we consider the regenerated ecosystem services as an economic benefit. We apply the framework to a multiobjective case study on the US state of Illinois where 160 PJ of bioenergy is to be produced considering objectives of net cost and Green GDP. Green GDP ranges from -$125M/y to $132M/y with corresponding net costs ranging from $107M/y to $260M/y.