Waste management system: key determinants of green development and energy balance transformation

Abstract

This article summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific debate on the issue of the waste management system as a key determinant of green development and the transformation of the energy balance. The main goal of the research is to analyze the structure of energy production and its impact on the environment in the context of waste management as a key determinant of green development, taking into account the current realities of the war in Ukraine. The systematization of literary sources and approaches to solving the problem of changing the structure of the energy balance within the framework of the green development paradigm proved that the scientific community began to more actively explore alternative ways of changing the structure of the energy balance, also the results of the bibliometric analysis proved the formation of several scientific directions in the study of the waste management system as determinants of the impact on green development and the transformation of the country’s energy balance. The urgency of solving this scientific problem lies in the fact that the production of primary energy produces about 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, the main source of continuous work of all spheres of the national economy is one of the biggest sources of negative impact on the environment and climate change. The study of the issue of the waste management system as a key determinant of green development and the transformation of the energy balance in the article is carried out in the following logical sequence: the first stage – bibliometric analysis based on Scopus and Web of Science data; the second stage is a comparative analysis of the structure of the energy balance (production and consumption) of Ukraine; the third stage is scenario forecasting of the transformation of the energy balance based on the Brown model. The methods of bibliometric, comparative analysis and scenario forecasting became the methodical tools of the conducted research, the period of the study was 2000-2020. Ukraine was chosen as the object of the study, since it is important to study all possible ways of increasing economic, environmental and energy security, taking into account the war and post-war periods. The article presents the results of scenario forecasting, which proved that biofuels and waste are one of the promising sources of primary energy in the structure of the energy balance of Ukraine. The study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that the government of Ukraine needs to investigate promising directions for the modernization of the energy balance structure. The results of the conducted research can be useful for evaluating the transmission mutual effects of waste management, energy balance, public health, and the state of the environment.