Rapid urbanization has led to a large increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) and poses severe environmental challenges. From the perspective of circular economy, converting MSW into energy for recycling has become a hot topic in this field. In this paper, in order to accurately assess the potential of converting MSW into energy, a hybrid prediction model named GRA-BiLSTM was proposed. We mainly evaluates the MSW production in Shenzhen through the forecast model to 2035. Then, the heat generated by the incineration of urban domestic waste was estimated, and finally, the potential of converting it into energy was obtained. The experimental findings indicate that: (1) The combined GRA -BiLSTM model achieves a MAPE value of 3.5882%, demonstrating its strong applicability in predicting MSW generation in Shenzhen. (2) Under the MSW forecasting of three scenes, the MSW generation ranges from 15.08 million tons to 27.89 million tons in 2035. (3) The potential for converting MSW into energy is estimated by the MSW generation forecasting and the MSW structure in Shenzhen. The electricity generated from MSW incineration in Shenzhen will grow to about 24.90 TWh in 2035.

municipal solid waste, forecasting, potential assessment, GRA - BiLSTM