The main reasons, which this research is based on, are evidenced by the need of technical, political, economic and socioenvironmental coordination for the municipal solid waste management in Brazil and in the State of São Paulo. Most of the counties do not have adequate size to promote the management of MSW, so it's necessary to perform a consortia to do it. Therefore, it was necessary to characterize the current State of Sao Paulo consortial arrangements considering the environment (including sanitation, waste, water resources, among others). The scale of waste generation and the total population involved in these consortia were also considered. The energy potential of municipal solid waste was evaluated considering two possible technologies: The burning of landfill biogas in engines and the incineration in plants with Rankine cycle. It was identified that the sum of consortia energy potential was 1,454,336 MWh y-1 (landfill biogas), and 2,715,925 MWh y-1 (incineration). It is intended that such results provide significant information and encourage interaction between the different agents involved in the intermunicipal arrangements. It is expected that the characterisation and calculation of energy potential will stimulate future studies about new consortia approaches that consider energy recovery in their projects.
Keywords: Municipal solid waste; energy recovery; public consortia; waste management; waste-to-energy.