The use of green waste from tourist attractions for renewable energy production: The potential and policy implications

Quantifying potential renewable energy sources from tourist attractions is a pivotal initial step in developing energy policies and strategies for low-carbon tourist industry development. Although solar energy and wind power have been in use for providing power for tourist attractions, the value of using waste biomass for energy production is still poorly understood. Here we advocate a promising approach that produces energy from green waste created by tourism attractions currently existing in large numbers and is still increasing dramatically. Using the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) of China as an example, we evaluated the potential of utilizing green waste to produce energy from 385 tourist attractions in 16 cities of this region. Our results showed that the total potential energy production using the green waste biomass was estimated at 6740TJ/yr (1TJ=1012J) with an average of 137GJ/ha/yr (1GJ=109J), accounting for 6% (the average of the Yangtze River Delta, some scenic areas up to 93%) of YRD′s tourism industry′s energy consumption in 2008. The use of green waste for energy production is possible using current technology and could result in a win–win approach by reducing waste and increasing the renewable energy yields.