Decomposing uncertainty of greenhouse gas emission reduction costs in MSW management: A case study

This study applies Simulation Decomposition (SimDec) to a real-world municipal solid waste management case in Türkiye. Combining life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC), the analysis quantifies greenhouse gas abatement costs under uncertainty and decomposes the results to reveal which parameters drive extreme outcomes.

The case demonstrates how SimDec helps distinguish between merely low nominal abatement costs and genuinely robust solutions. By mapping landfill gas collection efficiency, biowaste capture rates, and cost assumptions directly onto the output distributions, the study identifies when certain strategies become risky despite appearing favorable on average.

The work shows how hybrid global sensitivity–uncertainty approaches can support more informed environmental decision-making under deep uncertainty.