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Recycling and energy recovery of waste plastic are major categories of modern solid waste management systems. Since the lower heating values of plastics are around 30 MJ/kg, equivalent to traditional solid fuels, such as petroleum coke, coal and charcoal, waste plastics are considered as potential fossil fuels alternatives in various industrial sectors. Already nowadays, energy recovery of waste plastic is typically conducted by combustion in incinerators or cement kilns. However, due to various types of waste plastics, their thermochemical behaviour has been rarely investigated. Even more, the thermochemical behaviour of waste plastics under oxy-combustion conditions has even rarely been studied. In this study non-isothermal thermogravimetric analyser was used to study the thermochemical behaviour of polyurethane plastic waste under seven different atmospheric conditions. Polyurethane decomposition kinetic constants have been estimated by the simultaneous evaluations of seven weight loss curves measured for the heating rate of 20 K/min and a final temperature of 1,073 K. The obtained results showed that the combustion of polyurethane is mainly composed of two stages, and the higher oxygen concentration slightly influenced the first stage but highly accelerates the second

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This 34th volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management includes papers from the 2021 conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) held October 10-15, 2021, in Dubrovnik, Croatia as well as the 7th International Conference on Smart Energy Systems held September 21-22 in Copenhagen, Denmark and two normal papers. A focus area of this issue is district heating and district cooling systems, with articles addressing resources for district heating and cooling systems, impacts of having individual district heating metres for consumers and approaches to analysing district heating systems. Another focus area is stakeholder involvement where two groups of researchers focus on stakeholders from an energy island perspective as well as from a positive energy district perspective. Both groups note the importance of factoring in stakeholders when devising transition plans. Plans for increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources for the Estonian, Latvia and Lithuanian systems are analysed using the Backbone model, finding modest increases in system costs. Lastly, an article sets up an indicator system for assessing environmental performance of European Union member states ranking, e.g., Estonian, Latvia and Lithuanian as moderate (Estonia and Latvia) to weak (Lithuania) in terms of sustainable energy performance score, based on 2019 data.